Four types of power play a part in our lives, but the power that will transform you enters your ditch and is with you. 

I’ve seen it all.

Through the eyes of my half-dead body, I watch them come, look, and then go.

Will no one stop to do what I cannot do for myself? I am alone, and no one wants to engage, connect, look upon my swollen face, and pierce my life with hope.

It’s a gift of power I need.

I need someone to cross the line and do what I cannot do for myself.

The disempowerment of abuse

Abuse, in whatever form it comes, has a nasty way of taking the life out of you.

You are left feeling less than others. You’re small, weak, and insignificant. You get stripped of something of the gloriousness that you once were.

Abuse that harms doesn’t have to fit into the major categories of sexual abuse or violence. It could be a little well-aimed slight by a child in the schoolyard. A put down by a bully. A lack of basic essentials such as affirming touch and encouragement.

No one escapes the blows and cuts from living in a broken world. Unfortunately, many of our wounds can remain untreated or undertreated for our lifetime.

Many people come to this website because they pray into an internet search engine the words ‘God, I want to die.’. But I wonder what it would be like to pray, ‘God, I want to live fully.’

I don’t want to live a half-dead life. I want a life where I am fully alive, where wounds have been changed into scars. Abuse cuts and traumas have become beauty marks and toned muscle.

The harm now brings something of God’s life to others, and as we connect, we ‘mouth to mouth’ resuscitate those who robbers and thieves have violated.

What would it be like to be fully alive?

Overpowered

Jesus tells a story about power.

“A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.

By chance a priest came down that way. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 

So likewise a Levite, when he came to that place, looked at him and passed by on the other side. 

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he set him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 

The next day when he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, ‘Take care of him. I will repay you whatever else you spend when I return.’ Luke 10:30-35

(denarius, a coin worth about a day’s wage.)

In Jesus’ story, we find a man experiencing the effect of Power over. He had been assaulted, robbed, and left half dead. Thieves, robbers, bullies, and tyrants had stolen something of his glorious humanity. Perhaps a fellow human was the only way to restore something of power within.

If you were to look through the eyes of the dying man, what would you see?

What expressions of power would your heart engage with?

Perhaps it comes down to three questions.

1. Are you with me in my need?
2. Are you against me in my need?
3. Are you ambivalent about my need?

Power with, power against, power withheld. 

Four types of power

What does this dying man see?

1. Power withheld The eyes see the avoiders. Those who create a void. They have the power to do something, but they hold back.Maybe it was fear or a sense of inadequacy. Perhaps they were too busy, or they were holding on to some sense of self-importance. Let’s not make excuses for those who withhold good. Instead, we can all do for one what we wish we could do for everyone.
2. Power over He had already seen the violence of ‘power over’ relationships, but now another human was moving towards him. But this was a different expression of ‘power over.’ This was someone doing for him what he could not do himself. People often use this parable as a justification for rescuing people. Yes, this was a rescue mission because he could not do what was needed for himself.  One of the most challenging and saddest moments of my life was when I worked at the coal face of people with mental illness, and I would encounter people so unwell with their illness that they could not make rational decisions. Illness had thrown them into a ditch. There was typically a psychosis involved. They were lost in a ditch of hearing, seeing, and feeling things that no one else was experiencing.  Often they were a danger to themselves and others. I would have to use ‘Power Over’ and call others who had formal power, by law, to take this person into care. So it was ‘power over,’ but not to take something away from them; more so, it was to give them something back. The Samaritan did what the man could not do for himself.
3. Power with I like this form of power the best. It’s the idea that I will do what I can do, you will do what you can do, and together we will make a difference. The Samaritan went to be with the half-dead man. He crossed the lines. He poured out oil and wine to clean and disinfect. Bandages were bound around the wounds. I wonder if these strips of cloth came from his clothes being ripped apart. This was ‘withness’ in deepest connection.
4. Power given The ‘power with’ transfers into enabling others to give power to the recovery process. The Samaritan knows that others can help in ways he can’t. He uses his own money, two days’ wages, and the promise of more to ensure empowerment continues. A healing nest is needed.

A power within begins to grow.

Something happens in this man. The power within him begins to grow. Strength returns to his body and also to his soul.

Perhaps because he has experienced both the worst of power and the best, he now has a deeper awareness of humanity.

It is lovely to see someone grow in their internal power. They begin to see the lines of their unique shape.  They see those who have used ‘power over’ badly. They see those who have ‘withheld power’ and leave them alone.

But then they begin to see those with them and want to continue to be with them. As a result, inner beauty and strength grow.

Something both glorious and good begins to grow within the soul. Its beauty and strength begins to transform the dangerous roads we travel on. Its love is unstoppable and dangerous, and it must have release.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

These four types of power play a part in all our lives. The power that will transform you, will enter your ditch and be with you.

It’s your eyes I want to see Looking into mine Got you live on my mind All the time. Bruce Cockburn

 

Quotes to consider

• Therapists accomplish good results because they are lovers, in the personal sense of that word, and not experts. Only genuine, unpurchaseable love does what needs to be done in the human soul. Larry Crabb. The Safest Place on Earth.
• Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime
• Christ taught us that the supernatural love of our neighbor is the exchange of compassion and gratitude which happens in a flash between two beings, one possessing and the other deprived of human personality. One of the two is only a little piece of flesh, naked, inert, and bleeding beside a ditch; he is nameless; no one knows anything about him. Those who pass by this thing scarcely notice it, and a few minutes afterward do not even know they saw it. Only one stops and turns his attention towards it. The actions that follow are just the automatic effect of this moment of attention. Simone Weil Simone Weil. Waiting for God
• Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness. John Bradshaw
• We live in the shelter of each other. Celtic saying 
• I don’t see how we can show anybody we love them if we do not sacrifice for them. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• Sacrifice of oneself for the other is simply love in its later stages. It’s a very old-fashioned word. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering

Questions to answer

1. Which of the four types of power grabbed your attention?
2. How can we cultivate more ‘power with’ in our relationships?
3. Lines get crossed all the time. What type of power helps restore the soul?
4. We are all traveling from a Jerusalem to a Jericho. What has happened on your pilgrimage?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Derick Daily on Unsplash

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

 

When we’re half dead and want to be fully alive, we need a love that crosses a line. 

He was half dead. She had been stripped naked.

They had worked him over, taking enjoyment from the assault.

I leaned down over her nakedness and heard a whisper, ‘Help me.’

I saw beauty under her bruises. I saw his potential slipping away. I saw it all, felt it all.

I had crossed a line. I was in their world now.

Others walked up, noticed, and avoided. I held her close, hoping something of my life would breathe into her. He draped his arms over me, fingers clasping for connection.

I didn’t have much to offer, but all that I had, I gave.

‘Stop walking by,’ I screamed at all the self-righteous with their self-protective rules. They would look with millisecond attention, focus elsewhere, then quicken their pace.

The thugs who had assaulted this naked soul were probably still around. Perhaps I would be next.

Love crosses a line.

Love crosses a line

The relationship between the first woman and the first man must have been incredible. Sure, there was a line around the unique identity that was a man, and that was a woman. They were different but also complementary.

There was a deep desire to outdo the other in the expression of love. So it flowed. It overflowed. One into the other and back again.

No hint of selfishness or holding back. No walls or hiddenness.

The line was there, they knew they were different from each other, but there was such an openness to both give and receive.

Love crossed a line where they didn’t even know a line existed.

Lines with walls

We now have walls built on top of our lines: fences, barricades, and even razor wire in some cases.

A little hurt here and there, and we build a wall. The wall becomes thicker and higher with repeated experiences.

The ‘I will never let my heart be hurt like that again’ sentence becomes a mantra most likely learned as a little child. Repeated over and over again, it becomes an anthem.

Repeated experiences of abuse, both small and large, help validate our wall-building program.

We are secure inside our walled city. Isolated but safe. Alone but in control. Strong, but actually fragile.

But we need community. Someone to leave their travel plans and venture into the ditch where we are half-dead. Someone who wants to see us become fully alive.

Can we be vulnerable to some line crossing?

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

A good neighbor crosses lines

Jesus tells a parable of what vulnerable love looks like.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’

He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

This agape love leaps across mountains and bounds over hills (Song of Solomon 2:8). It runs through bands of robbers and thieves and jumps over walls built high. (Psalm 18:29)

It’s absurd to the rationalist and rule-bound.

It’s real, costly, and puts the lover at risk. It kisses the leper and breathes life into corpses.

The legalists, the accountants, the Pharisees, and the scribes will definitely look down upon it. They will critique the gifts poured out as much as they did the woman who kissed and poured perfume over the feet of Jesus. (Luke 7:36-39)

To Cross a Line is to take a risk.

To show us love, God crossed a line. God came to us in the form of someone like ourselves – Jesus. We killed God on a cross. Christianity is the only religion in the world where God dies.

Love died and rose again.

Now we are called to take a risk and cross a line.

It doesn’t have to be large. It could be giving someone a glass of water or some clothes. On the other hand, it might be visiting someone imprisoned by illness, poverty, or crime (Matthew 25:31-46). Crossing a line, moving beyond self to enter another self, always carries an element of risk.

Would you do it for me?

Do for one, what you wish you could do for everyone.

 

Quotes to consider

• Our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses … for in him also Christ ‘vere latitat’ – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

• If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. 1 Coronthians 13:1-3

• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. Henri J.M. Nouwen

• Research teaches us that the capacity to reach out to others for help in dealing with fear and pain is the best single remedy for emotional injury.  Whether the person is struggling with the effects of combat, rape, or childhood injury, the best predictor of trauma resolution is good social support. Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It
• Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one. C.S. Lewis
• The opposite of love is not hate , it’s indifference. Elie Wiesel
• Where there is great love there is always miracles. Willa Cather
• Human life must be about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, and teaching impulse control. Richard Rohr 

Questions to answer

1. What do you think of the sentance ‘Christianity is the only religion in the world where God dies.’ ?
2. Who would you cross a line for?
3. Who has crossed a line for you (please dont say Jesus) and entered into your distress?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Will on Unsplash

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

There is a kind of loneliness that feels like a huge void has been opened up, and you’re broken on the other side. But there is one that crosses the void to bring connection. 

I’m still trying to understand why they avoided me.

They knew I was in a mess,  and I thought they were my friend, but they never contacted me.

They a-voided me. Break that word ‘avoid’ down.

The word void, in this sense, means an empty space, and that is what it felt like. It was like there was an empty space between them and me.

Loneliness and abandonment can kill. We were always meant for intimate community, but instead, we so often find empty voids in our relationships. No one is willing to cross a line to touch and engage the soul of a neighbor.

Have you ever felt that someone is a-voiding you? You don’t know why there is a void between you and them? Or perhaps you do know why, and it’s because of something that you have done or has been done to you.

You’re on the outside, and no one comes near.

Perhaps you’re doing the avoiding. Making sure there is a distance between yourself and them—sometimes, you need to do this to feel safe.

The Void

So who is my neighbor?

That was the question posed to Jesus.

Jesus tells a story and invites us to look through the eyes of the first person mentioned in this story—the half-dead victim of abuse.

Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance, a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. Luke 10:25-30

Imagine yourself as that man.

You’re half dead, eyes barely open, naked, and you’re slipping in and out of consciousness.

You see someone come, and a glimmer of hope springs up, but when they see you, they create a void. Then, a second person comes, and they do the same.

What goes on in your mind? ‘Will no one help’

It’s abuse to neglect the other that is in obvious need.

We say to ourselves in our defense that there are so many that cry out for our help. The victims of earthquakes, natural disasters, crime, and poverty, and we can’t help everyone. But perhaps that is not the point.

Perhaps we are called to do for one what we wish we could do for everyone. To cross the line and fill the void with one other soul.

Does God love me?

There is a question or a series of questions that I get continually asked. They are based around a central heart struggle – Does God love me?

I’ve been abused and hurt, and surely if God loved me, God would not have allowed this to happen. Surely God can fix this situation?

If God is good, then what is God good for?

Dan Allender states

‘Abuse provides the raw data that seems to prove that God is not good,’ the ‘devilishness of abuse is that it does Satan’s work of deceiving children about God’s true nature and encouraging them to mistrust Him. Dan Allender The Wounded Heart.

God steps into this broken world with all of us making broken world choices. God comes in the form of Jesus. Fully divine and yet fully human.

Jesus experiences the fullness of abuse – intentional and unintentional.

He experiences the darkness of the void. He knows the void you experience.

I’m unsure if this neglect of giving love and creating a void isn’t more abusive than a full-on physical attack. It’s more subtle and hidden.

This a-voiding by others can reinforce and strengthen a belief that you genuinely are nothing. Everyone else has their life together, but you don’t. As a result, you are further dehumanized through loss of connection.

Filling the void

I will wait for someone to come and fill the void. Someone who will step across the line and move into my world with grace and kindness. Someone to welcome me into their embrace and banish the darkness of the void.

‘On the cross, the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion, the movement stops for a brief moment, and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in. We, the others – we the enemies – are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which they love each other and therefore make space for us within their own eternal embrace. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 129.

I am welcomed with their embrace.

The word ‘vicarious’ is one of my favorite words. It  simply means to serve instead of someone or something else

When someone steps across the line and enters my ditch with grace and love, I sense something of the nature of Christ filling the void and giving me hope.

I wait for someone like me who has dirt in their toenails to wander down, cross the line, and fill the void made by others.

 

Quotes to consider

• No victim is responsible for having been abused. But abuse does provide strong reasons, potent stories, to ask, “Where was God? Does  He love me? Can I trust Him? If   can, what am I to trust Him for?” The devilishness of abuse is that it does Satan’s work of deceiving children about God’s nature and encouraging them to mistrust Him. Fearing to trust God, the abuse victim will naturally choose other gods to provide her [or him] with life, whether alcohol, promiscuity, or approval-seeking. Dan Allender The Wounded Heart
• I think not touching a child for decades at a time is a form of injury. I  think withholding any expression of love until a young boy is a grown man is a form of emotional violence. And I believe that the violence men level against themselves and others is bred from just such circumstances. Terence Real, I Don’Don’tt To Talk About It
• No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God’s, faithful love. Henri Nouwen Inner voice of love
• Beneath what our culture calls psychological disorder is a soul crying out for what only community can provide. There is no “disorder” requiring “treatment.” And, contrary to hard-line moralism, there is more to our struggles than a stubborn will needing firm admonishment. Beneath all our problems, there are desperately hurting souls that must find the nourishment only community can provide—or die. Larry Crabb – Connecting
• We are saved by those whom we go to save, and both of us are then saved in spite of ourselves. There is a mysterious “third” which is doing the saving. Suffering for and with the other seems to be the only way we know that our lives are not about us. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering

Questions to answer

1. Where have you experienced the a-void?
2. Who did Jesus cross the a-void to minister to?
3. Do you think the neglect of giving love is worse than a full-on physical attack? Look through the eyes of the man in the ditch.

Further Reading

Barry Pearman Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

It’s a human experience to know the trauma of falling into the hands of robbers and thieves, but there is one who joins us in our ditch.

I was robbed a few years ago. I had parked my truck in a parking lot and had gone into a shop to purchase a few things.

When I walked out, I saw someone looking into the back of my truck. I thought that was strange, so I began walking briskly toward them.

When they saw me coming, they rushed to their vehicle, climbed in, and took off. Two adults were in the car, a male and a female, and two children were in car seats in the back.

When I got to my car, I saw some gardening tools were missing.

I jumped in the truck and took off after them. This is where you hear upbeat Hollywood music!

But they had gone, couldn’t see them anywhere, so I returned to the parking area and went into the shop to see if they had security video footage of the event.

They did, but these thieves were cunning. They didn’t drive close enough to the cameras to get good images. The security guard said that this is what robbers do. They cruise around the carparks looking for opportunities. They are fully aware of where the cameras are and the quick exit routes.

I watched as a van cruised around the parking lot, found a spot next to my truck, and went back in next to it for a potential quick getaway. Then the male and female rummage through the gear on the back. They tried to open the doors but found they were locked. They then started to take equipment from my truck and put it in their car.

I called the police and filed a report, but nothing was returned. Fortunately, insurance covered the loss, enabling me to buy better-quality tools.

But ever since then, I have been more careful with where I park my truck and what I leave on the back. I will soon buy a van where everything will be fully enclosed and secure.

When you’ve been robbed

Wild thoughts and feelings raged through my mind about what I would do if I caught them. I did still have my pitchfork!

I had been violated; someone had crossed a line and stolen what I had worked hard to earn and purchase.

What a fool I was to leave my tools exposed like that. I was naive.

Then more self-accusing thoughts pounded through my brain—stupid, idiot, dummy.

Past shaming events triggered memories. I was a little boy again, being bullied.

Everyone will think even less of me than what they think of me now.

It is a downward, deepening spiral into despair.

Then there were those children in the back seat. They were being formed in their thinking that is what you do, this is normal. They would grow to think it’s perfectly normal to cross other people’s lines to get what they want. They were being robbed of truth every time this scenario played out before them.

Robbers and Thieves

Jesus once told a parable about us and how we have been robbed.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 

He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’

 He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ 

And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’

Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Luke 10:25-30

In the original greek, the word Jesus used to describe the robbers was léstés

lēstḗs – a thief (“robber”) stealing out in the open (typically with violence). lēstḗs (“a bandit, briard”) is a thief who also plunders and pillages – an unscrupulous marauder (malefactor), exploiting the vulnerable without hesitating to use violence.

There was more than one robber, and they only saw this man as someone they could take from. He was stripped naked, used for violence, and abandoned.

Types of abuse

Mark Laaser, in Healing the wounds of Sexual Addiction, describes two kinds of abuse: invasion and abandonment.

He places the types of abuse, invasion, and abandonment, into the four areas of human experience.

1. Emotional

• Yelling
• Screaming
• Putdowns
• Name-calling
• Profanity
• Mind rape

2. Physical

• Hitting
• Slapping
• Pushing
• Shoving
• Spanking

3. Sexual

• Touching or penetrating the genital area
• Teasing about body
• Sexual humor
• Sexual misinformation about sex

4. Spiritual

• Punitive or angry messages about God
• Self-righteousness
• Negative messages about sex
• Modeling unhealthy lifestyles

As you look over the list, you will probably see items you will connect with as either a receiver of this abuse or a giver. There is grace and forgiveness for us all, whether we are the victim or the violator.

Abandonment abuse we will look at in the next post.

Jesus in the ditch

For this parable to have the most significant effect, one must see themselves as that man.

Someone going about their daily business only to be attacked and left half dead. Naked, stripped of anything of value, and left to die.

Robbers and thieves. The obvious invaders and marauders across the line of our humanity. Everyone I have met can relate to some experience of abuse where someone has crossed an obvious line.

But we are not alone in our half-dead state. Jesus knows the invasiveness of what man can do.

He knows the invaders, thieves, robbers, and marauders. Jesus experienced the dehumanizing effects of living in a broken world.

He, too, was stripped naked and left to die. Christianity is the only religion where God dies.

When we fully face our wounds and how we have wounded others, we need someone to cross our lines with a message of self-sacrificial love and hope. That’s the message of the purest form of love. It’s where someone leaves the road, crosses the line, and enters our ditch with an invasiveness of resurrection hope.

Quotes to consider

• Any spirituality that does not lead from a self- centered existence to an other-centred mode of existence is bankrupt. Brennan Manning. The Signature of Jesus
• It is so difficult to admit to ourselves and others that we can’t control everything. Only when we name the ways we are powerless do we create space for God to step in. Richard Rohr
• Change is possible and substantial, but not perfected until heaven. “Substantial healing”, a phrase used by Francis Schaffer, underscores the possibility of deep and meaningful alteration, without blinding our eyes to the fact that permanent and final change awaits the transformation of the world through Christ’s return. The wounds of living in a fallen world with fallen people (including ourselves) make being damaged (internally and externally) a certainty. Dan Allender
• [Christianity is] the only religion in the world where God dies at the end. People say they’re Christians, but you know what? You never see them nailed to anything. (T.V. series – Inside man)
• I had never confronted the utter helplessness of rape, of knowing that it just did not matter that I existed; that I did not want this; that I was a human being; not a thing to be invaded, punched, or possibly killed. Rape denies that you are a person, that you exist. In contrast, lovemaking affirms your existence. Lynne Henderson, ‘What Makes Rape a Crime’, Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 3: (1988), 226.

Questions to answer

1. What happened to you as you read this post?
2. Where have you been robbed or assaulted?
3. What heals the wounds of invasive abuse?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

The Shape of You EDIT  

What’s your shape? I’m not talking about your body shape, i.e., weight, tall, thin, short, or wide. I’m more interested in who you are under the skin. What has happened to shape you into the person you are? 

What is your personality like?  What do you like to eat? Favorite music tastes. Are you a cat person or a dog person, or neither? Where were you born? What do you do to relax? What are the multiple facets that make you wonderfully different from someone else?

Who are you? 

“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive… …who is you-er than you!

Shout loud, “I am lucky to be what I am! Thank goodness I’m not just a clam or a ham Or a dusty old jar of sour gooseberry jam! I am what I am!

That’s a great thing to be! If I say so myself, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!” Dr. Seuss

The circle of your ‘I.’

I often like to share with people that I support the concept of the ‘I,’ ‘WE,’ WORK’ shared originally to me by psychologist Renier Greef. It’s comprised of four circles. 

The first circle is that of the individual. The ‘I’ refers to you. Who you are. 

It’s not a perfect circle. It’s imperfect. It’s freehand drawn to represent how unique and irregular we all are. No two circles are the same. 

But this circle contains all of who you are.  

You may only know a small percentage of what is within your circle. Much of the essential information is subconscious. It can be discovered if you want to go there. That subconscious below-the-surface flow of heart talk has been in the shaping process from before birth. 

Every one of us has ‘I..’ It’s what makes us uniquely human. You have a shape full of delight.

Your neighbor does, also.

A man was traveling. 

Jesus was in conversation with someone who had been shaped into having a litigious personality. They loved a good argument and getting their opponents tied up in knots. 

This expert in the law enjoyed making people feel small and foolish by using their intelligence and cunning. There was no gentle curiosity in them. It was more a legal ‘I win, you lose.’ 

He asks Jesus a question. 

Just then, a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

“Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?” Luke 10:25-29

You can sense the tossing of words back and forth. A question is asked, and a question is given in response. The legal and correct answer is given.

Another question is presented. This is a question of defining who is in and who is out. Who is a ‘neighbor’ and who is not? What shape of persons are acceptable?

But actually, it’s a question of lines. Who will I cross a line for and love, and who I don’t have to cross over to know. 

Jesus answers the question with a story. 

There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Luke 10:30

Those listening to this story would have immediately noticed that Jesus was telling a parable and that the primary character, the one that this parable was about, was the first person mentioned in the story. It was a man. It was an ‘I.’

Jesus invited them to view everything about this story as if they were this man. They were to look through his eyes. 

They knew nothing about this man other than he was a man and that he was traveling. 

But this man had a shape to him. He was human.

Jesus tells them nothing else about the man with which they could box him within. Jesus said nothing about his ethnicity, wealth, marital status, age, or occupation. Nothing that we might be able to codify or label him with. Nothing from which we could decide if he was in or out of the ‘acceptable’ shapes to mix with. 

He was simply a man on a journey. He could have been any one of us. 

And that’s the first point Jesus was making. This anonymous man is us. It is you. This is someone in the shape of you.  

The Road

Jesus tells us that he was on a road and that he was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. 

Those early listeners would have known this road well. It was a steep road from Jerusalem in the heights to Jericho in the plains. It was scorched and arid.

Eighteen miles long, this road was a major route for trading caravans, military personnel, and the pilgrims who visited Jerusalem multiple times each year. It was a busy road. 

But it was also a dangerous road where bandits and robbers would attack travelers. There would have been many hiding places and escape routes into the desert where no one would pursue them.

This road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a dangerous route. 

Your road

Whats your road been like? 

In the shaping of your ‘I,’ what has happened on your pilgrim’s road?

I once walked the Camino de Santago pilgrimage in Spain. On the very first day of the walk, I encountered some robbers and thieves. They didn’t come with fists and fury. They were more subtle. They wanted a signature on a petition and a donation to a cause. They were sly and cunning to the many innocent travellers.

On the journey I met other similar scam artists preying on the vulnerable.

They were willing to cross a line of truth to elicit some funds. I found out later that there was a gang supporting their deceit.

Have you ever experienced being robbed?

For the most part, the fellow pilgrims on our path are helpful, friendly, and respectful.

This is our journey, and it shapes us.

What has shaped you?

How do the lines around your ‘I’ look from the pilgrimage so far?

Our road through life is the same. We will have others with us. We will connect the shape of us with the shape of them. Lines around us will intersect. Some will enhance our shape, while others will rob and bring harm.  Many will bring both.

I’m in love with the shape of you.

There is something about you that has divine imprinting. Like the masterpiece artwork with the artist’s signature in the bottom corner. It’s a picture of your journey, and it has all the heights and all the lows. 

The battle scars are seen for the story they tell. Callused feet and well-worn clothes. There is a ‘Mona Lisa’ smile that no one can truly work out. It’s there, and it tells its own story of completion. 

I want to hear the story. The footsteps of your journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. I have my own experiences that may help you. You will help me. I’m in love with the shape of you. I’m interested in your ‘I.’

As I finished writing the above sentence, I received an email from someone unknown to me. A fellow traveler to Jericho. 

I’m suffering so bad with mental illness, I am a Christian and want to trust God has a plan for me, I just can’t get through this and I want so bad to go be with Christ. I feel so rejected and alone, and see no hope for my future. 

Something has robbed this traveler. I can see through their eyes and know the dark hole. They have a shape to themselves that God is in love with.

Quotes to consider

• Love is the outbound movement that trains people to heal injustice and kindly embrace the world. Norman Wirzba
• Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good. John Milton
• As pilgrims must discover if they are to complete their quest, we are led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Parker Palmer
• Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Abraham Joshua Heschel
• To be more aware of the other person, first become more aware of yourself. Without self-awareness, self cannot be laid aside, in order to listen. D. Riddell
• Love yourself as you love others. If you don’t care for your own needs, you’ll soon be unable to care for those who need you.  D. Riddell
• Spiritual growth begins with the easily overlooked disciplines of attentiveness and surrender. David Benner
• Love yourself as you love others. If you don’t care for your own needs, you’ll soon be unable to care for those who need you.D. Riddell
• Be there for others but never leave yourself behind. Dodinsky

Questions to answer

1. What has happened in your pilgrimage to shape you into who you are?
2. How would you describe your ‘I’? Likes, dislikes, hobbies, skills
3. We all have areas in our lives that are ‘no-go’ for others to explore. What would it be like to have someone listen to those with fullness of grace and love?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Mohammad Hoseini Rad on Unsplash

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

 

 

We all have lines around us. Mostly invisible. People cross the lines, and we are hurt, but we also cross the lines of others. 

The line had been crossed so many times that they were losing their own personal identity. Bullies, thugs, robbers, and thieves had crossed over into their personal space so many times that there was nothing left of who they were.

They felt like they were simply someone others used for their pleasure: a punching bag, a toy to play with, a commodity to be used and abandoned.

Lines had been crossed that were never meant to be. They were an object to be used and then discarded. No glory in them, no beauty inside. Impotent of purpose, much like a speck of dust in a corner.

For them, it felt much like this account from an abuse survivor.

I always felt that I was like a sort of Martian-I wasn’t from this planet.

I was never meant for this earth. And I was waiting to die, basically, just waiting for the day … I was waiting to die.

And I couldn’t relate to anybody. I felt so inferior and all the negative things, you know, so unworthy, or not worthwhile-without value.

And nobody would want to know me anyway and things like this.’ Peter Dale, John Allen and Lynda Measor, ‘Counselling adults who were abused as children: Clients’ perceptions of efficacy, client-counselor communication, and dissatisfaction’, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 26(2): (1998), 146.

It had started as a child, but it was still being played out in the whispers of today.

A line had been crossed.

I don’t think there is anything more harmful to the core of a person’s existence than to be used as an object for others’ gratification.

To be treated as something less than fully human.

To be dehumanized is to be deprived of human characteristics or attributes, to be made inanimate, and to be treated as an object.

The other is used to vent one’s anger, to play out one’s fantasies, to rob, steal and destroy.

The other is no longer someone made in the image of God. They are now someone to be used, abused, and left for dead.

The outcome is traumatized people.

We’ve all had lines crossed.

Every one of us has had the experience of having a line crossed.

It could be in the extreme, but it could also be in the small and seemingly insignificant. Little cuts add up. We play down and minimize some wounds because we don’t want to examine the core terror of being hurt.

We also cross other people’s lines. We say things, do things, and behave in ways that are abusive to others. Often we don’t even realize that we might be crossing someone’s line.

Recently, someone said something to me that cut me to the core.

They didn’t realize how much they had peeled off an old scab and that I was being re-traumatized. They went on with their daily business, but I’m still thinking about it daily.

We are indeed broken people living in a broken world where broken choices are made. But we hold on to the hope of God making all things new.

I’ve met many broken people, but in everyone, I have seen something unique, beautiful, and powerful. Someone wanting to be known, loved, and held.

There are no ordinary people.

I don’t think we understand simply how glorious we genuinely are.

We are so curved in on ourselves that we don’t have a good view of how much we are image-bearers of God.

I genuinely love sitting with people and asking God to reveal how this human bear’s something of Genesis delight. I look for sparks of firework creation. I notice the smile, the humor, the sparkle of some garden long ago. I want to smell the wafts of Eden’s creativity, touching my senses.

Where you focus is where you will go.

It’s in every one of us.

Read what C.S. Lewis writes.

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. …

It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. … Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Holiest object?

What would change in you if you were to see your neighbor as a holy object? Someone of God’s divine creative expression.

And then looking into the mirror and seeing yourself as a holy object. Someone who has infinite God beauty and presence radiating out of your being.

Impossible, you may well say. Nothing of God’s delight is to be seen here, yet there is. Under all of what we think we are, there is something bursting with life.

It’s all contained within some lines.

Invisible lines. Some people have strong lines like concrete walls that shout, ‘Stay away. You’re never going to see the real me.’

Others have tissue thin lines that seem not to be there at all, and people ignore them. Abusers walk through as if there is nothing there at all.

Lines are needed, and they are always built from the inside out.

Quotes to consider

• There are no little people in God’s sight, so there are no little places. To be wholly committed to God in the place where God wants him [or her]—this is the creature glorified … This is the way of the Christian: he [or she] should choose the lesser place until God extrudes him [or her] into a position of more responsibility and authority. Francis Schaeffer No Little People
• Internalized or toxic shame lethally disgraces us to the point where we have no limits or boundaries. John Bradshaw
• Can my world ever be rebuilt? Do I have any value? Can I be useful again? Is there life after failure? My answer is yes. That is what grace is all about. A marvelous, forgiving, healing grace says that all things can be new. Gordon MacDonald
• Tell Moses, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and St. Paul that the broken-world experience is an addendum, an add-on, to life. Tell them that pressure, failure, and embarrassment are not part of the course of human development and maturation. They simply won’t agree. They will say that sorrow, pain, and stress are the “graduate school” of godly character and capacity if people are willing to enroll. The problem, they may suggest, is that this school has too many no-shows and dropouts. Gordon MacDonald
• In pain, failure, and brokenness, God does His finest work in the lives of people. Gordon MacDonald
• If the church has a future it is a future with the poor in whatever form.—Henri Nouwen.
• Brokenness is a condition, one that is always there, inside, beneath the surface, carefully hidden for as long as we can keep a facade in place. We live in brokenness. We just don’t always see it, either in ourselves or in others. Larry Crabb
• A central task of community is to create a place that is safe enough for the walls to be torn down, safe enough for each of us to own and reveal our brokenness. Larry Crabb

Questions to answer

1. Where have lines been crossed in your life?
2. Where have you crossed others’ lines?
3. How did you respond to the idea that your neighbor and even yourself as being a ‘Holy object’?

 

Barry Pearman

Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

You may feel alone, but you have a purpose, and that is to co-create with God, so lets L.O.F.O.

Recently a friend asked me to pray for them. It caught me by surprise, but as I listened to the struggle they were facing, I felt it was a privilege to listen to the coalface experience they were inviting me into. I held them and prayed. Later they said it made all the difference. I co-created with them.

What a privilege we have to be able to co-create.

We use the word co-create sparingly, but it means working with someone to create something. So there is an invitation to a partnership.

I received an email the other day with the question. ‘Why won’t God let me die’? My immediate thought about their pain was that ‘God needed them for something.’

Why would God need us?

The God of infinite power that can speak a universe surely doesn’t need us, but God does need us, and there is an invitation to co-create.

We co-create with God.

I look at the garden and see a rose I planted years ago. It’s flowering now with generous white blooms.

I prune, feed, and water it, yet I do not control this beauty. I have limited power over its glory.

It will most likely be there in fifty years, blessing someone else. I am co-creating with God for future generations’ enjoyment. I am simply a steward of the now for the hope of the future.

The early church leaders Paul and Apollos co-creator with God.

Paul co-creates words in a letter to his friends in the city of Corinth.

 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.

For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. 1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Paul could see him and Apollo working together as God’s servants to co-create God’s field, God’s building.   Paul’s desire to die

I don’t think Paul was suicidal, but I do believe Paul desired to be somewhere else, and that somewhere else was to be with Christ.

If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer.

I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 

Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. Philippians 1:22-26

I believe Paul carried a heavy load of shame and guilt for how he treated the early church. It was his ‘thorn in the flesh,’ but God had not finished with him yet and desired to co-create with him. Read – Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh and its Meaning for You. 

It was ‘fruitful labor’ that held him firm. Those times when he was able to co-create with God and others and see something good grow from a seed into a flourishing rose bush, filling God’s world with beauty.

We co-create when we L.O.F.O. and act on them.

We L.O.F.O.

L.O.F.O. is an acronym for Look Out For Opportunities. 

It’s straightforward. We look for opportunities to co-create with God. Little things.

• Picking up a piece of rubbish and putting it in a bin.
• patting someone on the back and saying well done
• Changing someone’s flat tyre.
• Sowing some seed
• Buying a friend a cup of coffee
• Sharing a photograph you have taken of a little bird to the world via social media.
• Adding a dollar into the churches collection plate
• Sweeping the floor
• Mowing your neighbour’s lawn
• Sharing your thoughts through a blog post

This list could go on forever, but its little things done with love help co-create this world. It’s the antidote to suicidal thinking.

It’s the thinking that this world was created out of and for – self-giving love.

 

Quotes to consider

• Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. Mother Teresa
• Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Teresa of Ávila
• Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. Anne Lamott
• Nothing digs ditches like shovel fulls of dirt. Rick Hanson
• Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Joshua Heschel
• Faith is not the opposite of doubt. Faith is the opposite of certitude. Where you don’t need to be certain to be happy. If you can’t go there, you’ll never be happy because you’ll never get logical certitude. If you’re waiting for 100% certitude, you’re never going to be happy. Richard Rohr.
• To accept some degree of meaninglessness is our final and full act of faith that God is still good and still in control. Richard Rohr

Questions to consider

1. How does it feel to be a co-creator with God?
2. How can you incorporate L.O.F.O. into your daily life?
3. What does ‘fruitful living’ look like for you?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

Photo by Jake Thacker on Unsplash

Writing blog posts over many years teaches you many things,  but what are the key learnings? Knowing these can help you create words that connect.

This blog post recognizes the momentous occasion of publishing 500 posts. Some posts are from guest writers, but most are from my authorship.

Five hundred posts are a lot of words, and when you create something of worth for an extended period, you begin to hone the craft. You pick up skills and techniques that work for you.

So I am going to share nine key learnings since I started writing in July 2012.

Do you want to create something meaningful? These pointers will help.

 

What I have learned from publishing 500 blog posts

1. Everything starts with listening. Before you write a single word, you will need to listen. Listen to the multiple streams of thoughts that come flowing around your brain. It might be something you read or a podcast you have heard. A verse of scripture, a poem, or a song. It comes down to listening and discerning the one idea for you to focus on. Listening takes time, unhurried time, and permission to give yourself for that seed to germinate.
2. Your vibe attracts your tribe There are people out there who will connect to your writing style, thoughts, and wisdom. You simply need to connect with them. Your vibe, what you find helpful and interesting, will attract your tribe, those who truly get you and want more. So share what you are reading and finding helpful—little quotes and thoughts. When you do this, others like you will gather around your campfire of wisdom and form a community. Please, be yourself; everyone else is taken.
3. Be consistent, and show up. Every week at the same time, share your creation even if you think it’s not that great. People, and search engine algorithms, will get to know when to expect your latest piece. Showing up creates habits in your brain and patterns in your lifestyle. ‘This is what I do, this is who I am, and this is when I do it.’ You will start to see everything as a potential idea for writing. You will move from being someone who writes to being a writer.
4. Do it anyway You will have your detractors. You will have people close to you that are ambivalent about your calling. You may have people who might thoroughly criticize and seek to destroy your work. Write and build anyway. At times, I have had to hold onto this beautiful writing from Mother Teresa. ‘In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.’ Mother Teresa The full quote is in the quotes section.
5. Write from your coalface I have a little phrase that keeps singing to me. No one knows coal like a coal miner. I want to hear words from people digging away at their dark coal face. I don’t want theories, philosophies, or any unlived truths. So I write from my heart first, then the head, and then dance between the two. I want to connect with the dark coalface of other people’s lives and shed some light. To connect, I have to share something of my coalface. I am a beggar myself, searching for bread and sharing a few crumbs.
6. Write and then edit It’s so easy to write and edit as you go. Try and resist this. Getting all the words out on the page first is best, then go back later and edit. When I want to get the words out with no distractions, such as spelling checkers, I use a free app called Write Monkey. It’s a simple, distraction-free tool that’s like writing on an old-fashioned typewriter. Make as many mistakes and errors as you like. Then, you will find yourself free to pour out the words without distraction.
7. Keep the focus on One idea When hammering a nail into a piece of wood, you have one nail and one hammer. The point of what you are writing is that one nail. What is that nail? What is the one point? If you have multiple points, you will confuse the reader. If you confuse, you lose. Noise is the enemy. Too many ideas will dilute the one that truly needs the focus.
8. Have an overarching theme.  My focus in my writing is Mental Health and Christian Spiritual Formation. If I were to sprinkle in articles on car mechanics, recipes, or shoe repair, it would confuse you. Everything I write and share has a connection to my overarching theme. Perhaps this post doesn’t, but it’s my party, and I have the microphone!
9. Become a quote collector There are so many wonderful authors who have been there and done that. As I read them, I come across wonderful little jewels of sentences. I have to collect them. I can’t help myself. So I highlight them if they are on my kindle or underline them in a paper book. Then I go back later and organize them into categories in Google docs. So when I write a new blog post or a book, I can easily find and share them as I have done below. I can also share on Social Media, and this vibe attracts my tribe.

 

Nine learnings from 500 blog posts. There are many more I could share, so I am writing a book about writing. I hope these nine gleanings have helped you.

If you have questions or would like to talk more about your writing, please feel free to contact me.

Quotes to consider

• Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles

• People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway. Mother Teresa
• People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. George Bernard Shaw
• I have learned one thing. As Woody [Allen] says, ‘Showing up is 80 percent of life.’ Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both. Marshall Brickman
• Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. Lao Tzu
• Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. Madeleine L’Engle
• We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely…When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.”  Anaïs Nin
• Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through the lips and fingertips.
• I always try to preach from my scars and not my wounds. So, talking about depression is not in any way a wound for me. Nadia Bolz-Weber
• Our great problem is trafficking in unlived truth. We try to communicate what we’ve never experienced in our own life. Dwight L. Moody

Further Reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

 

Read this further at https://turningthepage.co.nz/nine-key-learnings-from-writing-500-blog-posts/ FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

One tough moment after another can bring you to the question, ‘Does God hate me’? But I want to know more, so I sit with those at the coal face and grow in my knowing.

No one knows coal like a coal miner. I could go to a scientist and get a scientific explanation about coal. A commodities dealer could tell me the dollar value of coal. Someone cooking over a coal fire would give me another limited view.

But for me, if I wanted to know about coal, I would go to a coal miner. One of those old-fashioned coal miners who has entered the bowels of the earth and dug away at the dark. Covered in the dust, there is noise, danger, and fear, but there is a camaraderie among fellow miners.

No one knows God like someone who has been at the dark coal face of life.

I suppose that is why I am drawn to people who chisel away at the coal, face the darkness of life, and find God there with them. It’s not the theologians or the pastors that pull me in. More so, those who, in all the struggle of daily life, have found something like a diamond amongst the coal.

I would rather sit and shed tears with them for hours because that is where I believe Jesus the Christ would be.

Does God hate me?

If someone was to ask you that question, how would you answer it?

Would you give an intellectual answer, quoting scriptures such as John 3:16?

For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

They are in a dark place and want to know heart truth, not head knowledge.

First of all, I think they would want to be known. To have their world explored and not sidelined. Maybe connection is the best word.

I would like to know how their understanding of what God is like was formed. Was it through various church experiences or parental influences? We’ve all got to start somewhere, so where was their starting point? What winds have blown across their path that has shaped their course?

Whenever I hear the words’ God hates me,’ I am filled with a kind of sadness for the person and the journey they have been on to get to this point of expression.

Quoting scripture upon scripture and getting into intellectual arguments rarely helps. This is because they need to hear words from the heart, not the head.

Our great problem is trafficking in unlived truth. We try to communicate what we’ve never experienced in our own life. Dwight L. Moody

Alongside ‘God hates me,’ other words are often spoken, such as ‘God is punishing me’ and ‘God doesn’t care.’

I have found that there are at least three ways that people express this belief.

Three expressions

1. God never answers my prayers. I pray for all sorts of things, particularly those that cause me a lot of pain. I pray for others, but those prayers don’t get answered either. I pray, but nothing happens. Everyone else seems to have prayers answered for a better life but not me. God must hate me. God withholds good things from me.
2. God didn’t stop that from happening. I’ve been hurt, and God could have stepped in and stopped it from happening. I have been injured in so many, many different ways. Where were the angels? Where was the ‘deliverance’ all those silly church songs sing about? I feel like God overlooks my struggle. God simply allows terrible things to happen to me. I wonder if God gets some perverse delight in watching me in pain. God must hate me.
3. I can’t reach God’s standard. I believe God has a performance standard, and I can never reach it. He hates my pathetic attempts. Everyone else is accepted, but I’m not. I try and fail.

They go on to say other things.

Look, I know you will tell me that God is love. I know you can quote all the scriptures about God being love. Then you will sing all those sappy songs about God being good.

But my reality is that I am in pain, and I want relief. I can see right through your intellectualism head knowledge, spiritual bypasses of avoidance, and coping strategies. It’s either God is really like Santa Claus, a Sugar Daddy, or a Disney’ wish upon a star’ God or not.

You see, at an early age, I was told that I am nothing, no one, a simple consequence of a couple of cells saying, ‘Howdy, doody.’

Then out I popped. I cried in pain, and I have cried ever since.

What sort of cosmic joke was my conception?

I think of the Christ of Jesus hanging on a cross and crying out ‘My God, why have you detached from me.’

The songs of lament and darkness from the coal miners of the Bible sing back to me.

I’m on a diet of tears—     tears for breakfast, tears for supper. All day long     people knock at my door, Pestering,     “Where is this God of yours?” Psalm 42: 3

Broken

I have a little sentence that I play around in my head that helps me make sense of things.

I am a broken man living in a broken world with broken people making broken choices.

But I am comforted by the coal face knowing of an unbroken God who is in the business of making all things new.

I still have the wafts of perfume from the Garden of Eden filtering through my existence. A beautiful sunrise, a bird that sings, a smile on a face, and then, at times, some droplets of joy touch my face washing the coal dust away.

I am caught between Eden and Heaven. We are a broken and fragile people living in a broken and fragile world, so of course, coal dust will clog our arteries.

I need others who know their brokenness but have somehow learned to dance—people who aren’t ‘happy-clappy’ or who live in theological fundamentalist squares and boxes.

I need people like Marva.

Marva Dawn dances

I once took a paper called Spiritual Formation. It was a week-long intensive, and the lecturer was a visiting theologian called Marva Dawn.

Into the week, she danced.

Let’s be clear; she didn’t physically dance. She wasn’t able to because of the many physical disabilities she had, and she actually danced into the fullness of God’s presence on April 18, 2021.

Here is an extract from a tribute.

Dawn’s joy came amid a lifetime of struggles with pain and illness. She faced battles with cancer, chronic pain, blindness in one eye, a kidney transplant, and problems with a foot that made walking difficult or impossible. Remembering Marva Dawn, a Saint of Modern Worship

I remember watching her hobble up to the lectern and clinging to it so she could teach. Words flowed from the coal face.

She authored more than 20 books in her lifetime, covering topics like Sabbath-keeping, the vocation of ministry, suffering well, and sexuality. Still, my favorite is Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity.

Read this

We do not understand how God accomplishes using even our brokennesses for the fulfillment of the Trinity’s purposes for the cosmos, but I am convinced that the Holy Spirit does.

Just one little example will suggest much wider possibilities than we could ever imagine.

Before embarking on one trip for a speaking engagement, I was complaining to my husband because a problem with my feet had put me in a wheelchair.

I did not use this specific vocabulary, but basically groaned that my “dream” of ease while fulfilling my obligations for that particular assignment was “shattered.”

During the conference a somewhat cynical man came to me after one of my later lectures and said, “I wouldn’t believe a word you say—except that you are sitting in that chair!”

I’d had too small a dream.

I just wanted my life to be easier by being out of that wheelchair; I hadn’t asked God to fulfill His larger purposes of deepening someone’s faith precisely because I was in it. Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity

Does God hate you?

No, God doesn’t hate. Quite the reverse there is so much love for you that it is vastly more than you could handle or even come into comprehension of.

God is with you at your coal face, in your ‘wheelchair’, and is in the business of making all things new.

Quotes to consider

• Reality is what we notice on the surface – what we feel or see, what superficial perspectives we might gain, for example, from television’s evening news. Truth is much larger. It encompasses everything that genuinely is going on. The reality might be that our world looks totally messed up, that war and economic chaos seem to control the globe. But the truth is much deeper – that Jesus Christ is still (since His ascension) Lord of the cosmos, and the Holy Spirit is empowering many people to work for peacemaking and justice building as part of the Trinity’s purpose to bring the universe to its ultimate wholeness. The reality might be that you do not feel God, but the truth is that God is always present with you, perpetually forgiving you, and unceasingly caring for you with extravagant grace and abundant mercy. Not only that, but the very process of dealing with our lack of feelings and our resultant doubts about God is one of the ways by which our trust in the Trinity is deepened. Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity
•  One of my biggest problems in dealing with the breakdown of my body is that I keep looking in the wrong direction. I look to the past and the capabilities I once had, instead of looking to the future and what I will someday become in the presence and by the grace of God. Perhaps that is the strongest temptation for you too. Unfortunately, our culture reinforces that mistake by its refusal to talk about heaven, as if it were an old-fashioned and outdated notion. We also intensify the problem by craving present health (as limited as it can be) more than we desire God. A friend once said to me. “This is so hard getting old—there are so many things we can’t do any more. I guess the Lord wants to teach us something.” Indeed, our bodies will never be what they previously were, and we find that difficult because we miss our former activities. But God wants to teach us to hunger for Him, our greatest treasure. Instead of rejecting the notion of heaven, we genuinely ache in our deepest self to fill that concept with a larger landscape of the Joy of basking in God’s presence. Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity
•  In contrast to our society’s mistaken emphasis on positive emotions in our relationship with God, the great Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross (1542–1591), who is most famous for his reflections on the “dark night of the soul,” also wrote a piece called “Advice on Disregarding Spiritual Sweetness.” In this work St. John compliments the person who loves God without feeling any emotional sweetness, for that individual is focusing on truly loving God and not the feelings. To set our will on gratifying and soothing sensations, to concentrate on capturing them and basking in them, is simply to set our will on what God has created, instead of God Himself. Thereby, we turn those created feelings into the end instead of a means—and a non-necessary means at that. According to St. John, we are ignorant if we suppose that because we fail to have any sweetness or bliss God is failing us. Similarly, we are uninstructed if we presume that in having such delectable emotions we have God. But the height of ignorance, he claims, is if we would follow God only to seek the sweetness and consequently stopped our yearning for God to wallow in delightful feelings when we acquired them. Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We are Ill: Wholeness And Hope In Spite Of Infirmity

Questions to answer

1. Have you ever felt that God hates you? What formed that idea?
2. How would you answer someone who felt that God hated them?
3. What coal face experiences have shaped your beliefs?

 

Further reading

 

Barry Pearman

Life can go on and on from day to day, but when we stop to notice little moments of delight, something profound can begin to grow—hope, joy, and thankfulness. Bible stories come alive.

For me, there is nothing quite like sinking my teeth into a perfectly ripe Black Doris plum and tasting the fullness of flavor as its juices flow across the taste buds.

As I write this post, it’s mid-January in New Zealand, and it’s summer. The Black Doris plum tree has come to its time of harvest, and I gorge myself on its delight daily. I have pruned this tree, given it fertilizer, and watched it flower.

I have longed for this harvest time whenever I have walked under its canopy. It’s the moment of tasting and seeing that Lord is good. God has provided a tree full of delight for me and others to enjoy.

This is a time of delight.

It is the little things that I need to train my brain to focus on.

The sip of coffee first thing in the morning.

The attention my grandchild gives to the story I am reading her.

The way a mother bird feeds a demanding chick hopping around behind her.

Where do you find delight?

It’s too easy to find dismay. Far too easy to find rotten fruit, bitter moments, anguish, hardship, and despair.

The brain is trained to have a magnetic pull to the dark.

Delight yourself

The songwriter of the Psalms sings these words.

Delight yourself in the Lord,     and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

What does the word ‘delight’ mean in the Bible?

In Hebrew, the word delight is ‘anog’ and has the meaning of to be soft, delicate, and dainty. To be pliable and tender.

Something good for the brain happens when we stop and notice that which is soft, delicate, and dainty. There is an element to delight that is fleeting. You will miss it, and it will cut you unless you stop to take it in.

As I write this, my thoughts wander to the story in the Bible of Jesus feeding the five thousand.

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 

Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 

And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Matthew 14:13-21

All those loaves and fishes being multiplied and given out.

Questions float through my thinking about the delight of this moment in the Bible.

• I wonder what the fish tasted like?
• What sort of fish were they?
• Was the bread soft or chewy?
• Was there anything unique about the flavors?
• Did anyone slowly roll around a piece of the fish and morsel of bread in their mouth? Delighting their brain in the flavors?

Delighting in something takes a conscious noticing and slowing down.

Now my mind is wandering to the delight of connecting a few words together that might help you, the reader, find new ways of living. The gift I am giving is vulnerable. You could easily skip over the words and not take them. I will write anyway because I find delight in them.

I take delight when someone emails me and shares their life with me.

How do we grow delight?

1. Open yourself to notice.  You probably don’t realize how many moments of delight are happening around you. Open yourself to noticing.
2. Be intentional in your quest.  Have an intentionality in yourself to look for the delight. Make it an exercise every day to notice little delights.
3. Take delight.  When you find something to delight in, go for it. Immerse yourself into that taste, smell, beauty, and feeling.
4. Soak in it Soak yourself thoroughly in the delight. Be with that delight for 30 seconds or more. Give the brain the message that this is something that is deeply meaningful. Take a deep inhalation of that rose’s delicate scent. Taste all the flavors of that piece of fruit deeply.
5. Give thanks Be thankful to God for those gifts of delight brought to your attention. God delights in us finding delight.
6. Ask questions. Why is that object of delight so meaningful to you? What’s the invitation God is offering you in this delight?
7. Repeat Continue to practice this enjoyment of delight every day. Notice the little things, take them, and give thanks.
8. Journal the delight Write about the delights you have found in your day or week. Writing helps to strengthen this discovery.

Perhaps as you discover the world of delight around you, you will also find the way God gives you the desires of your heart.

Quotes to consider

• The key to growing any psychological resource, including compassion, is to have repeated experiences of it that get turned into lasting changes in neural structure or function. Rick Hanson
• The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. [This] shades “implicit memory” – your underlying expectations, beliefs, action strategies, and mood – in an increasingly negative direction. Rick Hanson
• Most of the things we need to be fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest. Mark Buchanan
• In the inner stillness where meditation leads, the Spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds. John of the Cross

Questions to answer

1. What stories in the Bible offer us a moment where people would have experienced delight?
2. Where do you find moments of delight?
3. How can you cultivate moments during everyday to rest your mind in delight?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

Ever found yourself in a dark place? A simple state of sadness can throw you in such a place. At least l experience that often.

I used to be depressed, severely depressed, the kind of state that makes it hard for facial muscles to react to other people’s joyful interaction. Know the feeling?

Another indicator I find that confirms my sadness is when I walk through the yard after dark with the lights out: the dark strikes you even darker as it merges with the sadness inside, despite a wonderfully star-lit sky.

I often feel peace looking up at the stars. The sight of them makes me feel as if I’m in the company of close friends and closer to where I belong.

In my understanding, sadness happens as a reaction in our social living. A tone of voice can often be the simple trigger for sadness in the sensitive heart. Or maybe a broken relationship, or the absence of a loved one, can easily be the causes for sadness that will throw you in a dark place.

I’ve learnt not to ignore my sadness but it wasn’t always like this. Over time I learnt to acknowledge my inner state and act on it with some self-care actions. Washing my hair often helps. Or trimming my nails. These are very simple daily actions that can have an impact on how I feel. Do you have your own self-care actions sorted out for the darker days?

I often think of the time I find myself in the dark as a time of fasting. Not that I actually fast the sadness away but my state of sadness is equivalent to fasting.

In a way it makes sense as sadness prevents you from engaging in day to day joyful fuzziness. It’s a kind of emotional fasting.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

Sometimes you can feel like you are a problem to be fixed, but you're not that. You may have problems, but not a problem. 

You're not a problem to be fixed. Neither are you a personality to be probed. You're not a diagnosis, a number, or a category.

You may feel like you are being analyzed so that you fit in a box, but No, you're not a tick in a box.

You are human.

They may have a file on you that is lifetime long, yet you're not that file.

You are not a disorder, an addiction, an anxiety or a depression.

You're not a mood or a melancholy.

You're not a problem to be fixed.

But it felt like I was another problem to be fixed and they had the solutions. 'Just do this and that, and life will get back on track.'

'Next patient, please.'

Have you ever felt that? That feeling that you are simply another problem to be solved. That you are interrupting somebodies journey, and they want to fix you as soon as possible so they can get on with life.

It's called dehumanisation.

That's a very big fancy word that means to deprive a person of human qualities. You are no longer a human. You are more of a problem to be solved, a number, a disorder.

I once wrote an essay titled 'Dehumanization and Sexual Abuse.' Not an easy read, but one that takes the reader to the story that Jesus told of The Dehumaised Man or what many call The Story of the Good Samaritan. 

It's the man in the ditch, dying from the abuse of robbers. They saw him for what he had, not for who he was.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

 

We can easily go from one year to the next, but before you start the year, you need to stop the year. Stop it well.

As I write this, it’s the middle of the most interesting week of the year. It’s the week between Christmas and New Year.

Here in New Zealand, it’s summertime,e and for most people, it means the beginning of the summer holiday period. Most businesses close, and people often head to the beach for a swim. It’s a ‘kicking back’ time of year when all you want to do is to eat the leftovers from Christmas day, find a good book to drift off into, and swim, sleep, and relax.

Stop before you start.

In this week, I like to stop before I start. I like to stop the pressure of the normal, where it’s going from one thing to the next before I start the next year.

For me, this week is where I make sure to have time for personal reflection. I pause before I hit the pace again of another year.

It’s a time to note the changes, feel the losses, value the gains, and lean into the learnings.

This stopping before you start could be done any time of the year, but it requires some intentionality to hit the pause button. To slow down the machine of your life and retreat to an internal place of rest.

It’s allowing yourself to discover yourself and letting it catch up to you. You’ve had so many things happen to you that they are like little children tagging on behind, crying out for attention. They want to be seen, known and acknowledged. If you don’t, their wisdom for the next stage may well be lost.

So please stop before you start.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

 

Confusion can tear our lives apart, but perhaps a dream can clarify. For Joseph, a dream tipped the balance to trust a Christmas mystery.

Have you ever felt like your brain is caught in a tug of war? You are pulled and torn in different directions. Your values, rules, expectations, and beliefs pull you to behave in a certain way, but you have a pull dragging you to another point.

Contradictions to the normal pull at you to step out of your comfort zone. To walk on water, climb a mountain to make a sacrifice, marry a prostitute and eat the forbidden food laid out before you.

The mind in turmoil needs a voice of security to cut through the tension of conflict.

Do you want to stay safe, or do you want adventure?

I feel for Joseph

There is a character in the Christmas story that I think goes under applauded. All the focus is on the baby and mother.

We read the story every year at Christmas, full of wonder and light. We sing joyful carols and celebrate a birth, but there are backstory questions that probably never get fully answered and tied off as neat as a bow on a Christmas gift.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

Fear can be like a shadow creeping up and over you, but what do you fear the most? Understanding what you fear the most can bring assurance.

It was a simple wire bridge on a confidence course. Not very high, the three-wire bridge was a challenge for some and not for others. When I was a pastor to a group of people with serious mental illnesses, we would go away for weekends to a campsite with a confidence course.

People would climb to the top of the 2-meter-high platform. Then they would look down the wires to the other side about 15 meters away.

Taking the first step onto the single wire was hard. Afterward, you would stretch your hands to the wire on the left and the right and then creep across.

The trick was to keep an eye on where you were going and not necessarily where your feet were landing.

Others would be speaking encouragements, and some would hold the wire still for you, but this was the walker facing the fear of what?

• Falling?
• Failure?
• Injury?
• Humiliation?

It was the brain saying that this was dangerous. That it was different from normal walking.

It was the brain doing what it was supposed to do. Protect you.

But what if you did this three-wire bridge every day? That it was part of your daily commute?

You would eventually get very confident because the brain had been trained to accept living outside the norm.

When the worst thing you could imagine happens, and you survive and possibly even thrive, a new understanding of security grows in you.

If you fear drowning, then learning to swim helps calms you.

Perhaps it’s cancer, but as you go through the dark valley, you come to new places to experience God’s closeness.

Maybe you have feared a relationship breakdown, but going through it, you learn new trust and experience God meeting you in new ways.

You realize how much fear has controlled your life

You probably don’t know what you fear the most. It’s buried away in subconscious land and will only surface when your lifeboat begins to rock, and water comes in over the side.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

 

SUPPORT TURNING THE PAGE

https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

We want God to answer our prayer our way, but there is a larger story going on, so we wait to see the way God answers prayer.

Most weekends, when my children were young, I made buns for lunch. First, I would make the bread dough in a breadmaker, then take the dough out, cut the dough into the number of buns needed and then stretch out the dough before twisting it into a bun.

Then I would let them rise before putting them into the oven.

Fresh hot buns for lunch. Yum.

The stretching and folding of the dough add strength to the bread. In addition, all those gluten networks are helped to develop.

Within my prayer life, I sometimes wonder if God is stretching and folding me. It is developing me into someone with deeper glutenous faith networks that give me strength and texture.

I keep praying, but my prayers seem to go unanswered because they don’t get answered in the way I want.

Is God listening? I keep praying, but nothing seems to change.

It’s so frustrating. You seriously wonder if God is there, does God care, and does prayer make a difference.

Surely if God loved me, then God would change the situation?

I have concluded that God does answer prayer, but maybe the answer is not what we expect.

Maybe God’s hands are tied, as such, because of the free will God has given humanity to choose whether to follow God or not. There is a stubbornness in all of us that flexes its muscles against God.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Sighs and groans can come with such ease, but inhaling is also necessary. So we take note of our diet of breath. 

‘That was a deep sigh,’ he said to me.

I hadn’t noticed it, but he was right. I had let out a long deep sigh into the safety of our conversation. It was a release of something within me that needed to be exhaled: tiredness and exhaustion.

Bound-up tension had relaxed, and breath had escaped and flowed like water.

Somewhere, deep in my soul, the groan escaped as a sigh. Long and deep.

The body has a way of expressing the soul that we have limited to little control over. Noticing the involuntary communications of another can help us with connection to their deepest places.

Can I sigh and find an inhalation of hope? Is there something that I can take in to help me with the next few moments?

There is exhaustion. Physical tiredness from the work of the day.

But there is soul exhaustion from the long journey of struggling in a broken world. We breathe out and breathe in.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

You wake up and see a new day, but you didn’t want to wake up. So it’s a call to endure and go deep with God.

They want the pain to end. The struggle of the journey has become too much.

That’s the underlying theme of many of the emails I receive from people every week. They have taken the vulnerable step of reaching out to a stranger who wrote about someone like themselves.

They will use various phrases to describe their situation and their prayers.

Some of them relate to wishing to die in their sleep. That they would not wake up. They don’t want to take their own life. Instead, they wish for their departure to seem quite natural.

Have you ever been in this dark and sad place?

It’s the prayer of suffering.

It’s heart knowing only pain.

You sleep, but you wake to light. The new day shines through the window. Light flows around the misery one is in, and you ask why?

This is where we find our friend and fellow human struggler, Job—the one who knows endurance.

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/

 

We pick them up. Little hurts, big hurts. But how do we learn not to keep a record of wrongs that clogs the arteries of our life?

I visited a friend the other day, and they invited me into their home.

As we wandered from room to room, everything was immaculate. Paintings hung perfectly, furniture was set at the right angle, flowers were on the table, and everything was clean and supposedly in their control.

But as we walked down the hallway, a door was shut. It was locked. I tried to open it but to no avail. Finally, my friend said I wouldn’t want to go in there as it didn’t contain anything of interest. But after some gentle words and assurances, they took the key from their pocket and unlocked the door.

I stepped in and saw a single wooden chair in the center of the room. The walls were covered in post-it notes. I walked around the room and read some of the notes. All the hurts and pains of their life were written—list upon list.

Many were written in child-like writing. Some of them had math on them, but that was wrong in the summation.

• 2 x 3 = 10
• 4+9 = 49
• Mummy is angry; therefore, I am bad
• Daddy doesn’t talk to me; therefore, I am not lovable

The walls were full of notes.

All the wrongs had a list. What they had done and the shame shadow of the event.

Some had been written over and over again—the same note but with a bolder pen.

The notes had been categorized into themes and conclusions. Some colored notes meant a different theme, while others meant another.

They had brought these notes to whatever home they lived in.

I looked at the wooden chair and saw that it was well-used. Beside it sat a small table with fresh new post-it notes and a pen ready for new expression and confession.

I asked my friend how long they spend in this room.

It was most of every day. They sat in here and memorized every post-it note. Line upon line, they had observed and recorded, and rehearsed.

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

When you’ve hit the brick wall, the question may arise. Why was I even born? But over time, new depth may come through. A new birth may evolve.

I want you to imagine that you have a bungee cord tied around your waist. You are flying through the air, and that bungee chord is loose and free. You are alive, fully alive. It is scary but good. Life couldn’t be much better than this.

Then all of a sudden, the bungee chord tightens. You have reached the limit of its extension, and it pulls you back. But this time, the bungee cord pulls you back completely the same length in the opposite direction. There is no gravity to slow you down. You are heading directly for a brick wall.

You smash into it with the same force you had when flying in all happiness.

You’re broken, destroyed, and you ask the same question millions of people have asked before you even existed.

Why was I even born? 

It’s the extremes that hurt the most. From the highs of happiness to the lows of misery.

You sit crumbled below the wall of a dead-end street and wonder what this life is all about.

Why was I even born?

What’s the purpose of all this?

Where’s the logic, the reason, the knowing?

Worst still are the friends and family who supposedly come to your aid and ask further ‘Why’ questions. You don’t know why, fully. You can’t even offer any explanations though they demand you do.

So they draw their own conclusions and begin to shoot the dying body.

Why do we shoot our wounded?

Because we don’t like their story. It makes us uncomfortable, and life is meant to have order, peace, and harmony. Not ditch-dwelling dehumanization like a man beaten up and left to die on the side of the road.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We can get angry to the point where we want to curse the day we were born, but being held in our anger allows us to go through and not around the pain.

It was about time they got angry.

As the words vomited at me, through me, and around me, I thanked God. Finally, they were letting some of their real self be seen. No more holding back emotions for appearance’s sake. Now it was raw, unfettered, and verbally violent.

It wasn’t just the irritation of the current painful situation. It was the culmination of stuffing down the resentments of a lifetime. It was anger at me, anger at God, and anger at everyone in between.

And I encouraged the outflow. They needed to express themselves and get it out.

Afterward, they would be tired, perhaps ashamed they had been so angry, but they needed to know that it was safe and that even God, full of love, mercy, and grace, can be angry like this yet not lose the mark of love.

Sometimes I am angry like this. I want to throw rocks, punch the wall, and smash things. It’s ok.

Life doesn’t run the way I think it should, so I lose it inside. I rage with a smile on the outside but boiling on the inside. Not good, not healthy when I religiously repress.

What do you do with the pain of being human?

What do you do with emotional pain that entombs you in a dark hole?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

 

Give to Barry https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

When you are living in the shadow, you may feel unseen, but that place of the hidden may be the best place to be, so let’s make the most of it.

One of my favorite plants lives in the shadows. It can live in full sunlight but does best and shows off its brilliant flowers when it’s under the darkness of larger plants.

It’s the Clivia, the Queen of the Shadows.

In the spring, when I’m walking past some tall shady trees, I often see the Clivia with its dark green leaves and bold, bright red flowers shouting out to me that it has its place and role in the garden ecosystem. Little bugs will be living in the soil under it, turning over the decay and building soil life for the Clivia and other plant life.

It’s a system, a community, and a home for everyone to enjoy.

Living in a shadow

Sometimes I feel like I live in a shadow.

Do you feel like that too?

You feel undervalued, overlooked, discarded, and second-class. Everyone else is getting the attention, and I have little value and purpose. So where is my place in the sun?

My Myers-Briggs personality type is INFJ.

I’m an introvert, which may seem strange to you, seeing as though I have a blog, Youtube channel, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. So it would appear that I am pretty extroverted, but it’s more about where I get my energy.

I prefer alone time rather than being with others. So give me solitude to refill my cup rather than a busy mall or party.

But I have a message gained through solitude: I simply must get out into the world. The brilliant colors of the Clivia shine out from the dark contrast of the shade that speaks to the world. Alone time can shout life into the darkness of other lives.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME!Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearmanInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Every Saint Has a Past. Every Sinner Has a Future. So what choices of forgiven acceptance are you making in the moment of the now?

The source of the phrase ‘Every Saint Has a Past Every Sinner Has a Future’ comes from Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance.

It is spoken by Lord Illingworth, a self-serving, pleasure-seeking, and dishonorable man. In the context of the play, Illingworth thinks that saints are fools for giving up self-centered lives of pleasure, while sinners still have much more pleasure to come. Source

So let’s be ‘sinners’ and do whatever we like, and to hell with the consequences. 

But there is another way of looking at this phrase. 

It’s about owning our past and choosing in the moment of the now to define our future.

I have a little coffee coaster on my desk. It’s solid glass, and underneath, you can place a picture.

Through the glass, I see the words …

My past does not define me. It is the decisions and choices I make today

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health

 

Like a steady stream, a diet of words can shape us in ways unintended, but what if we had someone feed us good words? Perhaps then the heart would find a new course to flow from.

As she climbed a couple of lectern steps to read the passage, I wondered if she would be able to read the words. She was short in stature but powerful in voice. She seemingly hid behind the eagle lectern.

For this Sunday, it wasn’t a text from the Bible that she spoke but some poetry. (You can read it in the quotes section below)

I listened, watched, and feasted. I opened my heart, and it was fed.

As she spoke, she engaged herself with the words. At times she would lean around and seemingly look directly at me as she said the final words of a sentence.

She finished reading and slowly returned to her seat right behind me.

We have a section in our service where we can greet each other and pass the peace. We turn to our neighbors and wish each other peace. I turned around, clasped this dear lady’s hands, and thanked her for how she said the words.

Words had fed me.

Anyone could have read those words, but she had chosen to serve them with gentleness and purpose. This was not a robotic, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) rendition of a text. No, this was more an ‘I’m going to feed you some words to nourish your tired heart.’

It’s not only what you say; it’s how you say it. Words can sing together and shake the world.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

 

Are you out of balance? Perhaps what you need for your mental health are more activities that are tangible and tactile.

In the 1980s, my father and I spent many months building new fences on the farm.

We would clear the old post and wire fence away and make a new fence. First, posts would be driven into the soil, wires run out, stretched tight, and nailed to posts. Then, wooden battens would be fixed to the wires, and we would be done.

But not quite.

Then we would stand by the fence, look at it with wires so tight you could play a tune on it, and admire our work.

Something good here needed to be noted and nourished into our souls. We had created, and it felt good to look at our handiwork.

We improved at the craft every time we built a new fence line.

But the absolute joy came when you would come to that fenceline years later, and it would still be there. Proud and true, you could say with some pride, ‘I built that.’ It was tangible and tactile, not intangible and abstract.

It’s forty-plus years since I built that fence. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I have moved on, and the salt-borne winds have probably eaten away at the shiny steel to the point it will have needed replacing.

But I often think about that fence because here was an achievement that Father and son accomplished together. I remember pausing for a moment to let it sink into our brains and nourish the good.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

God, I need a miracle, but perhaps I need something more, and that is what God offers me and you. Something of depth and hope.

There are times in life when there is a cry from the heart for a miracle. It’s that diagnosis, the loss of a job, a relationship breakdown, a financial loss. Search your heart, and you will know the times when you have cried out, ‘God, I need a miracle.’

What’s a miracle?

One definition describes a miracle as ‘an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs—eg the healing miracles described in the Gospels.

The word miracle comes from words such as mīror (“to wonder at”), from mīrus (“wonderful”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)meyh₂- (“to smile, to be astonished”).

A miracle should cause you to be astonished, smile and wonder. It should cause you to think about something beyond yourself.

Take note that in these definitions, there is no sense of a time frame. We add the time frame, which is usually in the impatient NOW!

We, like impatient demanding toddlers, want it all, and we want it now.

But we look at the stories of Jesus and see the immediacy of people being healed, bread and fishes being multiplied, people being raised from the dead, etc.

We see the outcome, the cessation of struggle, and we want it now, now, now. Yet in God’s poetic economy of time, ‘a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.’ 2 Peter 3:8

Still, we pray and beg and plead for miracles. We sing, fast, give, and stand on our heads. We are much like those prophets of Baal dancing around the sacrifice, thinking that if they dance more, their God will do the miracle. 1 Kings 18:26-29

Perhaps that version of God has to die or at least be told to leave the building.

Something sad within me gets touched when I sense people are waiting for the miracle to happen. They use language that speaks to some sort of magic God. They are waiting for God’s magic wand to be swept over their problem so that with an ‘Abracadabra,’ the problem disappears.

I want a miracle, but actually, I want to know God more than the relief of earthly struggle, and that is where the tension is. Better life or deeper knowing.

The miracle may not happen according to my terms of reference. The cancer may not go away, the marriage may continue to crumble, and a hard heart refuses to soften to grace.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

So many good things go unnoticed, but when we learn to take in the good and let it nourish, then our whole direction of a life can change. 

My neighbors have some small children.

Yesterday, while walking in the garden, one of the little boys ran up to me to say hello. I then led him over to where some grass seed was beginning to come through the soil. We both got down on the ground and looked at the little seedling poking its way into the world. We were taking in the good.

Then we went over to the roses, and there were multiple rose buds about to burst their way into the world. We were taking in the good and letting it nourish. Finally, we saw a rose that had come out displaying its beauty. I picked it, and we smelt it—no perfume, which was a letdown.

I suggested he give it to his mother so she could take in the good and let it nourish.

I went into the orchard and saw a plum tree ablaze with flowers, then a Kereru (New Zealand Native wood pigeon) landed in the tree. So I stopped and took in the good and let it nourish. That was until I found out it was eating the flowers, which meant I wouldn’t have plums in a few months’ time. So today I am putting some net over the trees.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

It’s a breakdown, a mental health breakdown, and it’s happened again, but there is a way to recover, and it’s something you can achieve.

The end result was exhaustion. They were empty of life and totally drained. So it was no wonder they were depressed and simply wanted to die.

It’s a story I hear all the time.

The body can only take so much. After that, it begins to break down.

Nervous Breakdown

You don’t hear this term so much these days, but it was pretty common to be told about someone having a ‘Nervous breakdown.’ For me, it meant someone not being able to cope. To crash into a wall of complete mental exhaustion. Unable to do much at all.

“Nervous breakdown” isn’t a medical diagnosis. But, it’s a type of mental or emotional health crisis. You may feel an overwhelming amount of stress, anxiety, or depression. In turn, you’re not able to function in daily life. Cleveland Clinic

These days we might use the term Burnout to describe what has happened.

But it’s that zone of existence where you have nothing left to go on.

It’s the heap of metal on the side of the road, commonly called a car, but it has broken down. It’s run out of fuel, blown a radiator hose and all the tires are flat.

It has no use to anyone other than being an obstacle to avoid. You’re that old heap of a car pulled over to the side of the road and have come to the end of your ride. You’re depressed to the point of wanting to die.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

They were always wrestling with comparisonitis, but that changed when they accepted themselves and became a peacemaker to their parts.  

It seemed they were always striving. I was wanting this and wanting that. They couldn’t make peace with the fact they weren’t meant to be superman or wonder woman.

They wanted to be someone else. They wanted something else, and the world’s economy pandered to this lust and obsession.

I think the most dangerous disease in this world is called Comparisionitis. If it doesn’t kill you, it will undoubtedly suck the life out of you.

It’s contagious and affects everyone I know. Yet, we continue to compare ourselves to others.

We look at others and make judgments on a thousand different aspects. You will have made some judgments about me.

I have made peace with myself that I am not someone else and don’t want to be someone else. I want to be fully me.

Is there still work to do? Of course. This Comparisionitis disease is ancient and old.

Are you comfortable with you?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Words tumble through our thinking to be a soliloquy, but you can change what you meditate on Day and Night when you change the song.

You probably won’t hear this word spoken today, this week, or even this month.

Soliloquy.

But you will hear a soliloquy today, and you will also speak a soliloquy today. Your soliloquy is an expression of what is happening in your inner world.

To me, the word sounds musical. Something to be sung. It also sounds sad. A sad song?

Of course, it’s one of those fancy words that no one ever says, but it has a special appeal or allurement.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

They were sitting with sadness, and life was fading away, but once they recognized its presence, they could accept it and learn from the shadow.  

Do you like shadows?

When I’m working out in the sun’s heat, a shadow provides a respite. A place away from the intensity of light beating on my skin.

But I’ve also noticed, at times, a shadow seemingly hanging over me. I can’t seem to escape it. I try to run from it, avoid it, and pretend it isn’t there, but I know it’s there.

It feels as if it might engulf me and swamp me into itself.

It’s there, and I don’t want to look at it.

But it’s a shadow, and what’s a shadow? It’s where some object has blocked out the light. It could be a tree, building, cloud, a person, or even a planet.

The light loses its intensity and is filtered, blocked, and hindered.

In that shadow lies a feeling I know. Sadness.

Other words link arms in the shadow. Grief, loss, loneliness, despair, depression, abandonment. It can be a pretty dark place in that shadow.

Sadness is the whisper of loss, the song of the ‘less than.’

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We all have a story, and it’s full of ‘and’s, but this is a story to learn from. So, therefore, we notice the ABT framework in ourselves and others.

There is a pattern to our lives; once you see it, you will see it everywhere. It’s in every great story, including your own.

I came across it a few years ago while listening to a podcast about why Donald Trump won his first presidential election. He told a better story. An ABT story. Make America Great.

And, But, Therefore.

Every great story has an ABT.

From a Fairytale to a Thriller.

Cinderella had no dress AND shoes AND coach to go to the ball, BUT her Fairy Godmother waves a magic wand and provides for her. THEREFORE, she has the shoes, the dress, and the coach.

Jason Bourne has a bomb ticking AND has only 30 seconds before it explodes and kills thousands of people, BUT because he has had years of training, he knows what to do. So, THEREFORE, he calls his grandmother for advice.

You will be able to see this sequence in your own life story.

In the simple. ‘I am hungry, but I have food in the pantry; therefore, I will go and have something to eat.’

In the complex stories such as ‘I fell in love, and things were going ok, but then I found out she was a chronic gambler. Therefore I am going to get some help and try and sort this mess out.

Can you see ABT in your life?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Life can be noisy, full of distraction, and leave you confused, but with the invite to listen, we can hear the whisper of ‘this is the way you should go.’

I have a lot of noise in my life. Not so much coming through my ears, but more so distractions.

It would be overwhelming if I had a list that recorded EVERYTHING I needed to do or felt I should do. The mental noise would be deafening.

Everything from remembering someone’s birthday, calling a friend, tidying my desk, etc., etc., etc.

Are you like that too?

Too much noise can make you want to stop and do nothing. It’s overwhelming to the heart.

Do you find that too?

Donald Miller has a little motto.

If you confuse, you’ll lose. Noise is the enemy, and creating a clear message is the best way to grow your business. Donald Miller

He is talking about a business having a clear message about what they do.

Perhaps we could adapt this quote to something more personal.

If you’re confused, you’ll feel lost. Noise is an enemy. Having a clear direction is the best way to grow.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

There is a comfort zone in the familiar, but there is a calling to step out of the boat and find a little something to stand on.

There’s always a call to step out of the boat.

The other day I was cleaning some items off a pinboard and came across a printout of my first receipt of money for a book I had sold on Gumroad. It happened back in 2015, and I remember that moment well. The amazement that someone would buy my book.

The paper is something tangible. I can feel that paper between my fingers, like my feet, can feel a stepping stone buried slightly under the surface of a pond I might walk on.

I’ve had many other moments of provision for me as I have taken this faith journey. Sometimes it’s a financial gift or donation, but mostly it has been the provision of work in people’s gardens. It’s always a risk to write. To put my ideas out into the world. It still is, but a compelling YES drove me to write a few words each week and to share my stepping out of the boat.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

People say you need boundaries, but what do you want to protect? When you know your ‘YES,’ you will be able to express your ‘NO.’

This website is founded on the word ‘Yes,’ but in order for the Yes to be realized ‘No’ has been said multiple times.

I have recently been watching the Tour de France. That incredible bike race through the French countryside where we see riders struggling up mountainsides and then racing down the other side at breakneck sp eds. Alongside the route are spectators. They cheer the rider on, particularly on those tough uphill climbs.

What we don’t see are the millions of moments that the rider has had to say ‘No’ over the years because they had a greater ‘Yes’ burning in their soul. It was the ‘No’ to certain foods, parties, late nights, and generally living what we would consider a normal life. Instead, a greater YES got them out of bed early in the morning to ride hours and hours by themself with no applause or accolades.

What is the YES you have burning within you?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We are faced with struggles, so we try to control the uncontrollable, but this brings even more stress. Better to stay in the zone of what we can control – ourselves

It was out of my control. The decision on how they would treat me was beyond my control.

Have you ever been in that situation?

You are at the mercy of other people’s judgment of you.

We see it all the time in the legal system. The defendant awaits the decision of the judge. Everyone in the courtroom has an opinion, but none of those opinions matter because the judge sitting in their seat of power has the final say. Guilty or innocent.

But we are all judges to some degree. We all make judgments about various people. We are presented evidence, and we weigh it against our own experience and values. We pronounce a verdict.

It’s a verdict that we will hold on to until we are presented with more evidence. Then we have to retry the defendant and of course, because we have already made a judgment changing our opinion involves an acknowledgment that we had got it wrong.

‘Know me before you judge me’ is a line from a Mental Health promotion we had here in New Zealand many years ago, but how many of us are genuinely willing to get in the ditch of another life and know the story that shaped the soul.

Who or what are you trying to control?

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

It surrounds us all the time. Ambient stress. We probably aren’t even aware of it, but we can do something about it when we recognize it. 

I have one of my favorite and most cherished items on the wall above my desk. It is a barometer that measures the pressure of the environment around me. To be more precise, it measures air pressure.

I cherish it because it was originally my father’s. So on this old beauty is a little plaque that has these words.

Presented to MR B PEARMAN from Glenbrook Sunday School Pupils & Teachers. 1949

It also has a thermometer to measure the temperature.

I remember my Dad often looking at the barometer to see what was happening in the weather world around him. The little needle would move as the weather, and air pressure changed.

A little move to the right would mean the weather would get drier and less likely to rain. A move to the left would indicate possible rain and storms. All very important to know when you want to decide on whether to shear the sheep or not or cut the hay crop or not.

There is pressure bearing down on us all the time. Air pressure, but we have become so used to it, and the pressure changes are so subtle that we hardly notice it all. With the barometer, first invented in 1643, we know something about the ambient pressure pushing against us.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Every one of us needs someone to help us with our stress load, but the best person is someone who has been there, done that, got the scars to prove it —Jesus of the scars.

Take the stress away. Essentially that’s what many of you and I pray for. We want the pressure that is upon us to leave. We want the miracle to happen, so we no longer have to be under the weight of it all, and sometimes it does.

Stress relief that’s what we want.

An incomplete biography

I like to read biographies—the stories of people and how they lived their lives. Most likely, they are the stories of the well-known. The sportswomen and men, entertainers, politicians, and adventurers, but what about those who are more like us.

Like one of us.

If God had a name, the human name would be Jesus.

For a microdot of time, a mere 30-plus years, he walked the dust-filled existence of being fully human. In the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have Spirit-led observations of his human life. Four biographies, but they are incomplete in the sense that you don’t hear every story and every challenge. You have the highlight reel with some lowlights too.

I would like to know more, and there is more.

The last verse of John’s biography of Jesus says this.

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. John 21:25

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Grief is hard, but grieving alone can be a torment of anguish, so we sit with the broken; we are silent and Shiva to the tears.

When my father cried loud and hard, I experienced a kind of solidarity in my grief. A child had died, and a funeral was had. I placed a small small casket into a tiny hole. It’s still there now.

Friends and family gathered and shared the loss. Yet, it still catches me whenever I drive past the resting place of one who never drew breath.

Life in this broken world can hand you questions and harshness that no answers can satisfy.

There is a time for everything.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: A time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to be silent and a time to speak. Ecclesiastes 3

But some people don’t know the times and the seasons for being quiet and sitting with brokenness. To sit with the sorrow of loss.

Read this further here  FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We are happy to accept good from God, but what about trouble? There is something deeper available when we center on clinging to God.

As a gardener, I work in all kinds of weather. Rain, sun, and wind – both light and strong. In the extremes, I complain.

The furnace of summer heat can be too much. Then in the winter, torrents of rain can stop me in my tracks. Sometimes the wind can blow so hard it’s dangerous.

But I know all this weather has both good and bad. In the summer, I long for the rain to water the earth and wash the dust off the trees.

In the winter, I long for the sun to warm me and the earth. Lighting charges the rain with nitrogen to be part of a cycle of blessing to the earth below. The wind keeps the flow of life from being stagnant.

I walk the gardens, and my mood’s pendulum swings from thankfulness to grumbling.

Throughout this, I have to remind myself that God is good. I have an eternal God that wants to help me in this broken mixed-up world.

Can you accept both good from God and trouble?

It’s easy to accept the good. The days when everything is going well, the sun is shining, you’ve slept well, and you know you have beauty and purpose.

But what about when the clouds are dark, tiredness and pain surround the heart, and you feel ugly and defeated. You want to hide or worse.

Acceptance is something we grow ourselves into.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

People can say some harsh things to us, but when someone close says ‘Curse God and Die’ you have to go to a deeper place of faith than they possibly have.

I was watching him wilt. He was once like a flourishing plant, enjoying water and sun and growing and giving out beauty. But now the water had dried up, the sun beat down like a torturer, and the once gentle winds were hammering and stripping him down to a skeleton.

Who will come To the aid Of a man like me Who will come to a man of poverty

Who will rescue the ship From the wayward sea Who will come To a man like me Derek Lind

Shooting the wounded

The first book I read about Mental Health and Christianity was ‘Why do Christians shoot their wounded‘ by Dwight L. Carlson. It’s a classic, in my opinion.

The author writes from a place where he has seen people with Mental illnesses getting wounded by well-meaning but ignorant Christians saying the mental illness was due to some sin in their life.

This ‘shooting of the wounded’ still goes on today, and it’s been around a very long time.

Whatever we don’t understand and are uncomfortable with, we attribute to sin. This calamity is because of something you’ve done wrong and God is punishing you.

It’s the law of retribution. You do something wrong, and you get the punishment. You do something good, and you get the reward. If bad things are happening, you must have done something bad.

But what if you have done nothing wrong and bad things happen.

The whiplash of the tongue

That’s the situation of the biblical character Job.

Every measure of what we would call success had been taken from him. His health, his wealth, his children.

He goes to the place which feels the most welcoming to his heart. The local dump site. There he sits in the ashes of yesterday’s goodness and picks at his skin.

That’s what you do when life is hollowed out. You grieve and go to a cave.

Another response, one of many, as we will see, is to lash out, particularly at those close to you and God.

The first of the whip lashes was from his wife. She, too had seen the trauma and tragedy of her children dying (Job 1:13-19)

The tongue swings are wide and deep.

Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.’ Job 2:8,9

Note that before she told him what to do, we see an affirmation of Job’s deepest quality, the one being tested. His integrity.

This word integrity (tummah in Hebrew) could also be translated as innocence.

Read this further here  FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

It can be so easy to lose hope. But when we ask, ‘How is it with your soul?’ an opportunity opens to journey to know wellness.

‘How are you?’ they asked. My response was polite, and I said that I was okay.

They repeated the question.

They wanted to know how it was with my soul at a deep level.

Eventually, I caved in to their gentle and persistent curiosity and shared a few more deep things. We hugged and prayed.

It was good. It was church.

But that’s a question that can challenge us. Do I go deep, or do I go shallow? Is this person safe to confide in, or someone to avoid?

There are a couple of people that I would have liked to have gone deep and known more about their souls.

One of them was named Horatio, and the other was named Job.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

You have a story. You are a story. To receive a story is to listen to the white space between the words.

I hear stories every day. You do too. But there are some stories I hear where I sense I am on sacred ground.

It’s when you feel that the other is taking some risk as they speak the hesitant words.

Words they may have told others and been rejected for.

So they have nailed the door of their heart that little bit tighter. Maybe even used super glue to seal any gaps.

But stories have to be told. Untold, they can eat away like a parasite feeding on its host.

There sits within all of us a need to be heard, known, loved, and embraced.

We were designed for oneness. That beauty of being known and knowing someone else. It’s a scent still lingering in us from Eden days. We want it, long for it. It’s in our DNA.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We need a weight loss program for the heart, but we can’t do it alone, so a vicar steps in and declares, ‘You are forgiven. Be at peace.’  

I could feel a kind of weight leave my body. I had carried this tension and held this stress for so long that it felt normal. But once I heard the words ‘You are forgiven. Be at peace.’ it was like someone had lifted a huge burden off my shoulder.

We’re not talking about a few extra pounds of weight you might be carrying because you overindulged at Christmas. It’s more the emotional weight of events that have happened to you.

The kilograms of guilt, the burden of shame, the gravity of regret. It’s the anger and resentment festering away and eating at your soul. The bitterness that still snipes in your silence.

This burden can be so heavy that it feels like it pushes you into the ground. You groan under the yoke of what you carry.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We want change, and we want it now, but deep change requires the granting of space and time. So grant it to our self and others.  

It was all becoming too much. Pressure from others to ‘get over it,’ to ‘let it go,’ and ‘sort your life out’ was beginning to cause them to feel less than capable, dumb, and stupid. That everyone else had their lives together but not them. They felt different and very, very alone.

In talking with many people, there often comes a time in the journey to wellness when they can feel immense pressure to change. They aren’t moving along as fast as others or want to. They want change. Quick change.

I remember someone expressing a lot of impatience that this journey to wellness was taking too long. Their family was putting pressure on them. But then we talked about the progress that had been made. The millimeters of deeply significant changes and how we were building something new and that good things take time.

Are you in need of some space and time?

Do you need to give others space and time?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We want a behavior change, but it doesn’t seem to happen. However, it will happen with many changes in the mind (repentance).

We always notice significant behavior change, don’t we? Yet, people who change dramatically are often given the stage and a microphone to trumpet the difference. I remember as a child listening to a story of a gang member and how he met Jesus, and his life was turned around.

We marvel at how this happened. It’s always the dramatic change we notice because it’s so obvious.

But I think some of the greatest stories of change happen over a much more extended period. It might be years, not days.

It’s safer to do it in small incremental shifts when you want to change course on an ocean-going cruise liner than in sudden sharp rudder turns. This change is so subtle that no one on board even notices.

If we were to take a long view back over your life and observe how you have changed, I think the subtle and unseen influences have changed you the most. Those slight course corrections add up over time. The changes in behavior are so tiny that we and others hardly even notice them.

That’s where journaling can be so revealing. Looking back over past journals to see how we thought and behaved even a few years ago can be very revealing.

Repentance, with a little ‘r.’

Some words are loaded with emotional baggage—loaded terms. You hear a word, and the brain immediately adds specific values and beliefs.

In the faith world, it could be words such as God, Church, Sin, Heaven, Hell, Pastor, etc.

You hear these words, and immediately, there is a visceral, internal emotional response. You attach a specific response and meaning to that word, possibly because that particular word was always connected with certain other words and emotions when you were learning the language.

One of those words for me, and I think for many others, is ‘repentance.’ It was always attached with negative consequences.

• ‘If you don’t repent, your going to hell.’
• ‘If you don’t repent, God will be angry with you.’
• ‘You haven’t repented, and that’s why these bad things are happening.’

Repentance was loaded with guilt, shame, control, and fear.

But the Greek word metanoia,  translated as ‘repent’ in the Bible, means ‘to change your mind.’

Repentance can be seen as those minor changes of the mind. As small as all the minor alterations to a car’s steering wheel as you drive down the road. Hardly noticeable but absolutely necessary.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Emotional pain can lead us to some very dark places, but embracing the pain may open doors for the Christ light to come and eat with us.  

It was another email of pain. I looked at my inbox, and someone had sent me an email in response to my ‘God, I want to die’ blog post. They wanted help. They wanted me to pray or offer suggestions. Most of all, I believe they wanted a connection with someone somewhere.

I get about two emails a week from someone in a dark valley. I’m glad they have reached out.  I email them back and say that I am praying for them. Sometimes I get a response, but mostly I don’t. For some, this dark place was a brief moment of pain, and in the morning, the darkness clears, and they resume the journey.

For others, the dark valley of pain is more like home. Memories and traumas sit with them and talk about the old times. What happened, why, and how it’s all hopeless, and there is only despair.

I have found that there is not much I can DO for them, but I can BE for them.

The pain of others makes us uncomfortable. It triggers our pain points. Our shadows of guilt, shame, betrayal, loss, and despair. All the ghosts that still haunt and taunt us. Sitting with a fellow pain bearer can catapult us into our dark valley.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

To demand or expect forgiveness is like a chess player trying to manipulate the board, but that’s not true repentance. Instead, repentance submits itself to the poetry of waiting, praying, and hoping.

They thought they could use the Bible to manipulate and control. Verses were hurled, and they were told, ‘You have to forgive because the Bible says so.’

If you’ve been on the receiving end of this form of manipulation, then you will have heard these lines and others trotted out. But the Bible was never meant to be used to whip people into compliance.

A spiritual leader [anyone] who lacks basic human compassion has almost no power to change other people, because people intuitively know he or she does not represent the Divine or Big Truth. Such leaders [people] have to rely upon role, laws, and enforcement powers to effect any change in others. Such change does not go deep, nor does it last. Richard Rohr Eager to Love

Have you ever had someone come to you and demand change because ‘The Bible tells us so’?

One of the worst abuses of the power/ guilt trip manipulations is to demand forgiveness.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Accepting the consequences is a repentant heart saying ‘Yes’ to what has been done, praying for mercy, and possibly discovering grace.

A few years ago I was caught speeding. I was going too fast. The police officer pulled me over and asked if I knew what speed I was traveling. I didn’t. He told me and then wrote out a ticket with a fine. I duly paid the fine.

There was a consequence – embarrassment and a hit to my wallet. There was justice, no mercy, and certainly no grace.

I accepted the consequence of my actions. However, thinking back now, I’m glad that the consequence was only a fine and not something much worse, such as hitting a pedestrian because of my excessive speed.

When you’ve been caught doing something wrong, what is your very first reaction? You may run, hide, blame someone else, or get angry, even at God. Anything to avoid an awareness that the consequences are entirely on your shoulders.

My ancestors have always done this. My parents tried to hide their crime under some figs leaves. My first father blamed my first mother, and my first mother blamed Satan. Satan laughed with glee. We are all stuck in the same curve.

You did it. Your choices got you where you are today, but your choices will also lead you out.

Yes, I know we live lives where so many other people’s choices affect us. But you have to take responsibility for that which is in your control.

I was the one that pushed the accelerator down too much—no one else.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We do something we regret and want to make amends for, but what about the heart. Come as a servant but don’t become a slave.

I was working in a garden the other day when I accidentally knocked over a small pot plant. It toppled over and fell onto a concrete path below and broke. I was appalled at what I had done. Of course, it was clumsiness, but these things do happen.

I immediately spoke to the owner and apologized. I offered to pay for a new pot. She said that wouldn’t be necessary. I was happy to give some money to make amends for what I had done, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

A broken pot. What about a broken heart?

What about something significant you have done relationally and want to make amends for your actions.

Definition of ‘make amends’ – to do something to correct a mistake that one has made or a bad situation that one has caused

It’s relatively easy when it has a financial basis. You offer to pay for the cost of replacement.

Perhaps the justice system is involved, and a sentence is imposed on you to make amends for your crime.

How often though do the victims still hold the pain of what has happened to them? Even though the perpetrator has possibly shown remorse, apologized, and paid with some punishment?

Reconciliation is both head and heart.

 

Read this further at I want to make amends FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We trip, fall, and land in the black, but with grace, a friend comes to show a pinpoint of light.

I knew what he had done, but I still loved him. I told him I loved him too. He found it hard to take that he was worthy of anyone’s love. But in all honesty, he was a sinner like me. We were both beggars trying to find bread.

Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles

He sat there recalling his crimes and the pain he had caused others. He needed to, and I prayed that he would feel both the embrace of my compassion and the compassion of Christ around his heart.

We had some bread, some grape juice, and a little feast of forgiveness and reconciliation. Two sinners both needing a spark of hope.

He was appalled by what he had done, and I knew that forever this would be part of the Cross he would have to carry.

Read this further at https://turningthepage.co.nz/facing-the-black-and-finding-some-light/ FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

A feeling of being abandoned can be like a cold chill across the soul. But God is always at work, so we need to remind ourselves of this truth.

I was recently at the help desk in a large store returning some items, and I noticed a small boy in the cubicle. One of the shop assistants then picked up the phone and made an announcement over the phone system.

‘We have a small boy at the help desk. Could his parents please come to collect him’

Within a few minutes, his father appeared, and they were reunited.

The father and the son must have drifted apart or lost sight of each other.

I wonder what the little boy was feeling.

Alone? Lost? Abandoned?

In a world created out of intimate, perfect connection, we can at times get lost to that sense of being known, loved, and held. Life can at times strike a deadly blow to those intimacies we were born for.

We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people making imperfect choices.

Have you ever felt the cold winds of abandonment chill your bones?

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

At times there are things we can’t do for ourselves, but perhaps someone else can. So we ask for help with our untied shoelaces.

Recently I woke up with pain in my left shoulder. I was in agony. My wife was away from home, and I knew that I had to go to an emergency doctor. So I dressed. But when I came to put my shoes on, I realized I wasn’t able to tie the shoelaces up. I didn’t care. I needed help so I left home with untied shoelaces.

When I reached the 24/7 emergency care center, I was greeted by a nurse. I asked if she would mind if she could do my shoelaces up. She kindly reached down and tied them. She did for me what I could not do for myself. 

Eventually, I saw a Doctor, received some medication, and went home. I had been overworking the muscles and had damaged them. After some rest, physiotherapy, and a change in some of the garden machinery I was using, my shoulder is better now.

But it was that small, simple act of someone tying my shoelaces for me that helped me in my distress.

We encourage independence and having a Do it yourself (D.I.Y.) attitude. We validate and endorse the ‘self-made’ man or woman.

With rugged individualism, we pride ourselves on what we can do.

But there are some things you can’t do for yourself.

For me, as I looked at my untied shoelaces, they represented something undone and messy. That I was a bit unkempt, unfinished.

I felt like a disheveled mess. How could I enter a Doctors surgery looking like that? I have certain standards of appearance, yet here I was confessing my weakness and inability to do such a simple (but actually quite a complex task) of tying a few pieces of cord together.

I’ve had the privilege of listening to people share their untied shoelaces. Those deepest hurts, disappointments, and struggles. Unresolved pain where shame and guilt have clotted together. It’s a weight on weary shoulders—a burden of regret and loss.

It’s like they need someone else to be there and be a witness to their shoelaces. That life isn’t neat and tidy, and stuff happens along the way that can leave us disheveled.

Perhaps untied shoelaces have caused them to trip up in life repeatedly. Or maybe they have adjusted their walk so that they don’t trip.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Who are the Five people you spend the most time with? They will be the ones who have the most influence over you.

Her response to a betrayal of friendship has probably helped thousands of others to get a better group of friends.

The other day I was listening to a podcast from Simon Sinek where he interviewed Marissa Meizz.

A young man, Drew Harding, happened to be on his lunch break, and while walking through Central Park New York, he overheard two young ladies discussing how they were planning a party but that it had to be on a day when their 'friend' Marissa was not going to be in town.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing, so he posted a video on 'Tic Toc' telling the story and hoping to connect with Marissa to tell her she needed to find a better group of friends.

The video went viral in the quest to find her. Eventually, she saw the video, and Marissa and Drew connected. They are now friends.

The next chapter of the story is incredible. Marrisa didn't turn bitter; instead, she chose to use the fame of this viral internet story to help people who are lonely to connect.

No more lonely friends was created, and they have meetups where people who don't know each other can come and make new friends. Many who come have had moments of being rejected.

Her Instagram page has fifty-one thousand followers.

Have you experienced rejection? Perhaps a betrayal by people who you thought were on your side. Gossip slips around and stabs you in the back. You're alone, deeply alone. You feel abandoned and lost.

No one 'gets you,' and there is no desire for community with your soul.

Its loneliness and rejection and betrayal and loss all rolled up into one big ball of pus.

Do you know what that's like?

Or maybe the relationships you are in aren't a source of encouragement to what matters most to you.

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Does God hate Me or Does God love me? What you think about God will form the patterns of your thinking and life.

Oh, that my heart might know a new reassurance.

Recently in my conversations with people, I have been giving them three little phrases to meditate on and speak into themselves.

I am loved I am held I am known.

When the anxiety starts to build, and the depression starts to drown, these are phrases that can quietly bring peace.

It’s the love of compassion for our hurting self, the being held while emotional storms rage, and it’s the being known fully despite all the flaws.

It’s what I hope a good friend can offer, but it’s also what God in full glory speaks to us. You are loved, you are held, you are known.

In our last post, we looked at the question Does God hate me? and I suggested 12 questions that I would have running in the back of my mind if someone had that question.

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Does God Hate me? Is God punishing me? Questions like these need gentle and grace-filled responses, so here are twelve questions that I would like to ask and explore.

Sometimes, when I listen to people, I hear little comments that bring a sense of sadness to my heart. Some firmly held beliefs that over time and repeated often enough create in them mental unwellness.

Phrases such as

‘God is punishing me.’ ‘God is angry with me.’ ‘God hates me.’

I don’t think I have ever felt that God hates me, but I have wondered, particularly as a child, that my illnesses or problems might be the consequence of something I’ve done. That God is punishing me.

‘You did this, and so here is the punishment or consequence.’ ‘Start doing the right things, and then God might be inclined to help you.’

Seems logical.

Isn’t that what typically happens? You do something wrong, and there is a consequence.

We can so easily create a conclusion by how we add up the facts or what we perceive as the facts.

Those conclusions become belief systems through which everything passes. They can become so deeply entrenched that everything flows into them. The brain then wires itself to look for further evidence that our conclusions are correct. We have a negativity bias.

It’s like A+B+C+D+E = God hates me. Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

 

We want to change, but willpower alone is never enough. It runs out. We need to have a stronger power - a heart power that strengthens our thinking.

I was going to change. I was determined. No more of those old habits and going down those old stupid ways. Now it was going to be different.

So with grit and determination, I tried harder to steer the ship of my life away from this behavior. And it worked for a while. I could see the changes happening. But suddenly, the steering wheel snaps back to the old ways.

It was like a magnetic force pulling me back to the old. All the willpower in the world didn't seem to help.

But then I hear a pep talk. Someone tells me about how they have changed. I get inspired by their change, so I throw myself into the wind again and grit my teeth. This time will be different. I'll do it right. I will try harder.

Then life happens. Stress comes. We get tired, and willpower seems to wilt away. So back we go into the old ways. The familiar is comforting. We give up and resign ourselves to being like this forever.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

It’s probably easier to give than to receive, but we can’t give what we haven’t already received. How can someone love, when they don’t know what love is? Are you open to receiving love? 

It was awkward. Plain embarrassing. It was so uncomfortable that they wanted to run from this gift-giving.

They had made some foolish mistakes that hurt people very close to them. How could they ever repay? This was the only family they had ever known, and they wanted to have a relationship with them.

For much of their life, they had clothed themselves with shame and guilt. They had truly messed up, and all they could focus on now was their failings.

How could anyone love them? They couldn’t even love themselves. They despised themselves.

But hands were reaching out to them with gifts. Clothes, jewelry, a party. All in their honor.

They quickly clasped their hands and arms over their chest.

‘Protect, keep safe, don’t let them in. I won’t receive a gift I don’t deserve, a gift I haven’t worked for.’

The gift giver walked away saddened.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Our self-talk can keep us depressed and anxious, but we can learn new thinking tracks. Your rehearsal can change your mind.

I always marvel at how the experts seem to effortlessly do something that I would difficult.

My earliest experience of this was watching shearers shear our sheep on the sheep farm I was raised on. I would be mesmerized by the smoothness and speed by which a fleece would be removed.

He had done this over and over again. Rehearsed and practiced the skill repeatedly. There was speed, but there was also a gentleness and fluidity to his movements that seemed to come so naturally. Like he was born with a shearing handpiece in his hands.

He had created muscle memory. He had created thinking tracks in the brain that were automatic. He could have done it blindfolded.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We see things, hear things, experience change, and become afraid. But when we know we are precious to God, a deep peace can come and flood us with strength.  

It was only a couple of words, and I felt stronger.

Words can cut, hurt, and harm, but they can also bring a deep sense of security.

Words can speak healing into pain like nothing else.

Your dark tunnel

There can be times in life where it feels like you are going through a dark tunnel.

There is a sense of abandonment and deep loneliness. Tiredness hangs off you like a wet towel. It's enough to give up any sense of hope altogether.

And if you've been there a few times before, it seems like the brain has a fast-track off-ramp to this place.

Any little struggle catastrophizes you into this dark place with incredible speed. You somehow 'pull yourself together' and regain some footing, but you know it's there, ready to swallow you up at a moment's notice.

You're vulnerable. Walking on the edge of a cliff, knowing even a tiny breeze of struggle could tip you over.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

The intervention

Others’ opinions about us can lead us to feel we are caged. Trapped, we grow in fear and worry, but recognizing them and boldly stepping out of the cage can bring us into new freedom.

I could feel myself slipping into the dark place of despair again.

As is my habit these days, I quickly ran to grab my Bible and said a quick prayer to counteract the negative thoughts.

Growing up, I was a bubbly and outgoing toddler. However, from the age of 6, I had turned into a bookworm.

My mother could not explain my sudden social anxiety and just brushed it off as a phase I would outgrow. However, as I grew older, my love for reading also grew. When I got hold of a book, I never wanted to set it back down until after reading. So great was my love for reading I would sometimes forget to eat or shower once I started reading a new book. 

In my culture of Zimbabwe, children are supposed to enjoy being on the streets and playing games with their peers. My mother would try and help me make friends, calling out to children who were my age to invite me if they had any fun activities planned. 

Now that I look back to those days, I loved books, and like my mother and father, I enjoyed reading anything in print, especially novels. However, reading was my way of escape, and I could see the world through a different lens by immersing myself in the characters of the novels I was reading.

My parents were a comfortable middle-class couple, with my dad working at a mine and my mother a stay-at-home mom. 

After having three children, she decided to go back to school and eventually college. As is custom, we would bounce around relatives’ houses while my mother was at school. 

 

Others’ opinions about us can lead us to feel we are caged. Trapped, we grow in fear and worry, but recognizing them and boldly stepping out of the cage can bring us into new freedom.

I could feel myself slipping into the dark place of despair again.

As is my habit these days, I quickly ran to grab my Bible and said a quick prayer to counteract the negative thoughts.

Growing up, I was a bubbly and outgoing toddler. However, from the age of 6, I had turned into a bookworm.

My mother could not explain my sudden social anxiety and just brushed it off as a phase I would outgrow. However, as I grew older, my love for reading also grew. When I got hold of a book, I never wanted to set it back down until after reading. So great was my love for reading I would sometimes forget to eat or shower once I started reading a new book. 

In my culture of Zimbabwe, children are supposed to enjoy being on the streets and playing games with their peers. My mother would try and help me make friends, calling out to children who were my age to invite me if they had any fun activities planned. 

Now that I look back to those days, I loved books, and like my mother and father, I enjoyed reading anything in print, especially novels. However, reading was my way of escape, and I could see the world through a different lens by immersing myself in the characters of the novels I was reading.

My parents were a comfortable middle-class couple, with my dad working at a mine and my mother a stay-at-home mom. 

After having three children, she decided to go back to school and eventually college. As is custom, we would bounce around relatives’ houses while my mother was at school. 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

We often miss the obvious, but when we stop and take notice of the changes, we have but one response – thanksgiving.

I noticed something about them. They had changed, and it was for good.

Something deep had happened in them. Instead of being so caught up in the emotional washing machine swirl of life, there was a kind of steadiness to themselves.

Nothing really had changed much in their circumstances. It was still a struggle. They still had moments of crying out to God for relief, but there was definitely something different about them.

Something had changed down deep, and it was growing a rock solidness in them. I noticed it.

There was an invite for thanksgiving.

When I mentioned it to them, they looked kind of puzzled, but they also knew what I was talking about.

They couldn’t describe it that well other than it was like having a deeper confidence in themselves and who they were. It’s the kind of knowing that you only get by going through a storm and coming out the other side.

It’s an internal change that is now unshakeable—a solidness to their soul.

It was the solidness that they could build out from.

In this noticing, I suggested we give thanks.

 

Read this further here  FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

The only way there is through. To reap a joy, we sow a tear, but it’s work, hard work, so we don’t travel alone. We journey with safe others.

I knew there had to be an ocean of loss behind the lifestyle mask they were wearing. For all the stories of trauma, they had managed life quite well. Everything in its place, compartments for this and that, and rooms of memories best kept locked and securely walled up. Everything was under control, supposedly.

But just like a camel carrying too many straws, this last one, small as it was, was the one that broke the camel’s back.

They were exhausted from the weight of keeping everything together. Their body was beginning to break down. It couldn’t cope with the load. It was never meant to.

They needed to cry.

It was only a couple of words, and the tap began to turn.

‘How are you?’

Apologies made quickly. Composure snatched, but the facade had cracks, and the face was awash.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Henry Ford. To change, it may feel like you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.

It all made sense.

I began to understand how the brain changes and that to learn something new will often feel you’re going against everything you believed to be true.

Like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road.

It takes time and persistence, but in the end, you will get there

Part of the change process is learning how to drive on the supposedly wrong side of the road to which you usually do so.

The priority of your feelings are to be safe and comfortable, but the divine priority for your life is to risk and grow. Which will it be? David Riddell

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Moments of thankfulness often pass us by without acknowledgment. But what might happen if we create a habit of noticing and capturing them. From one thousand gifts to three thousand gifts and counting.

This is a Guest Post from Pauline Turnbull.

It all began on the 24th of October 2020 when I took up the challenge of writing down one thousand gifts I could thank God for. 

I had been reading 'One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are' by Ann Voskamp.  

To date, it is precisely one year from the day I wrote my first GIFT. 

Barry's invitation to write this post is listed in my book as Gift# 3,001, after naming Gift# 3,000 as a thank you to God for each of those 3,000 gifts. 

So today, I opened my notebook and went back to where my gift counting began.

As I scan the pages, I am reliving the gifts I've numbered. These are sacred moments of grace and love that God has given to me.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Something new had to happen, and it could, but it would take a wire brush to shift the bark. So we submit to the master gardener.

As I came to winter prune this old rose, I said a prayer.

‘Creator God, guide me as I prune. As I cut and snip, wire brush and bend, cause new growth to fill the world with your beauty and purpose.’

Ok, it may not have been so poetically put together like that, but it was the intent of my heart.

After cutting and snipping much of last season’s growth away, I reached for my bright yellow handled wire brush. Normally used for brushing the rust off steel, this was now to be used on a plant, a living thing, a rose, in fact—the queen of the garden.

I always slightly cringe when I come to pruning season. It seems such a harsh thing to do.

To cut away what has taken time and energy to put together. I always warn my gardening clients that this may seem harsh, but something has to go if they want the fruit or the flowers.

The wire brush seems the harshest to me. It’s like a full-on assault of scratching and abuse on a protective layer of the soul.

As a soft-hearted kind of person, I wince at the thought. I never like to be that harsh with any living thing.

But there is bark and lichen and moss. A callusing has built up over the seasons that shrouds the potential living underneath.

There, under self-protective layers, is a place of cellular transformation. I can’t see it with the naked eye, but I know it’s there, and all it needs to stimulate it into growth is some irritation and a little light to touch its cells.

Then ‘boom,’ multiplication begins to happen.

Cells form other cells as an explosion of beautiful growth takes place. Then, a few months later, a bud is pushing out in the spring and telling the world that it is here to display divine beauty and make a difference.

By the way, whenever I see this explosion of growth, I do a little dance.

I also, quite often, do a little dance in conversations I have with people like you.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

Having a Mental Illness can mean you feel very alone, but does being a Christian mean that you’re somehow on the outside? 

I wouldn’t have noticed it at the time, but a few years ago, I began to look at the shaping influences that happened in my early life, particularly the Christian Church that my parents were very involved with.

We lived in the countryside and attended a church in the local township. Small church, and it was a place, I suppose, where you got to know quite a bit about each other.

Looking back now, I recognize that quite a few people struggled with various Mental Illnesses. For example, one of the church attendees had had a Lobotomy. Another would have Bipolar mood swings. Some would sit in the pews nursing depression whilst others would fidget with anxiety.

There was glue, however. An acceptance of ‘lame ducks,’ as my Father would lovingly call them. My mother would spend hours on the phone listening to the heart calls.

I suppose this normalized this encounter of Mental Unwellness to me.

I remember one day, though, later in his life, where my Father shared an experience of a Pastor telling my mother to believe certain scripture passages and that she would be healed. A kind of ‘Name it and Claim it’ approach.

I could sense his annoyance about what I would call a ‘burden of performance’ being laid on her. I would love to have a soul-talk conversation with him about this now.

All these shaping influences upon my thinking.

 

Read more here 

You’re tired, drained, but you can’t find a simple way to restore. So maybe it’s time to cease and savor delight in the little moments.

It had been a tough week—full-on giving out. People, work, tasks, energy-draining memories all want a piece of the energy pie.

What was leftover were like crumbs on a tin foil pie tray. That pie you bought in a rush to answer the demand of an evening meal. That’s how it felt.

Life, energy, all being eaten up, with a few crumbs leftover. Depression shadowed over the shoulders. Anxiety beat at the door.

They knew the next week would probably be the same. This time next week, they would again feel weak, drained, and lifeless.

‘Oh, for a holiday,’ they whispered.

Their mind drifted to memories of a time on a beach. Toes digging into the sand, gentle waves spilling over each other, and melting ice cream. It was a moment of delight for them. “Oh, to be there again’ they dreamed, and in a sense, they were. They were in cease and delight mode.

Do you know how to cease and delight?

 

Read this further HERE FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

There is a grain or a pattern to our thinking that needs to change, but we are stuck, so God gently comes against the grain and changes it from the inside out.

It goes against the grain of self-protection to let someone in, especially when we have been hurt. But God is in the business of woodworking and craft.

I love to look at beautiful timber. A tree has grown, and in the seasons of its life, it experiences the wind and rain, storms and droughts. The impact of these events shape the growth of the tree. Then, we cut the tree down, and before us, we discover patterns never seen before.

Patterns show cellular channels which transport nutrients from the roots to the leaves and back again.

Every piece of timber has a unique and special appearance to its grain. We see the shaping experiences that have gone into the formation of the wood. There is a pattern, a movement, a grain.

Carefully trained eyes can tell the flow of the grain.

There is a little phrase ‘To go against the grain,’ and it means to go against everything you believe to be true.

If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles. Collins Dictionary

This phrase comes from the world of woodworking. A craftsman sees the grain, the flow of the timber, and how it’s been created.

 

Read this further here FOLLOW ME! Websiite: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningthepagefaithhopelove/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/

No one likes to submit. It feels foreign and dangerous, but we long for intimacy (in-to-me-see), so we taste and see if the other is good and safe.

There was movement and rhythm as the couple glided across the dance floor. He gently led, she moved in response. She would tilt her head, he would follow. This was passion. This was love.

There was grace and beauty, purpose and direction.

The music leads them both. The beat kept them in time, and the rise and fall of notes kept them riding the waves of the composers’ expression. It was an expression of perfect submission.

They to each other and both to the rhythm and rhyme. Floating in perfection, entranced in grace towards each other’s little failures.

The other couple on the floor, though, were struggling.

One wanted to Hip Hop while the other wanted to Line Dance and the music was strictly ballroom.

It just wasn’t working. No one submitted to each other, and there was no listening to the music.

 Can two walk [or dance] together, except they be agreed? Amos 3:3

I long for perfect dance. A flow of perfect unity, but more often, I feel pull and push, demand and manipulation. ‘You will submit’ and ‘I demand you do …’

Relationships become policies and procedures, rules and regulations, real estate agreements, rather than walking in three-fold unison with something bigger than the relationship itself.

 

Read more here

There is a self-centeredness to ourselves, a turned/curved inwardness, incurvatus in se, but there is one that shows how to break the gravity, the pull of the curve.

There is a pull on me all the time.

It’s in the lyrics of the eighties pop hit.

What about me, it isn’t fair I’ve had enough now I want my share Can’t you see I wanna live But you just take more than you give. Garry Frost and Frances Swan

There is a demand for others to meet my needs. They should know that my life is the most important thing in the universe. It’s all about me.

Meet my needs; then, I might move on to listening to yours.

There is a curve, and all our thoughts run into it. When we run into others’ curves, their demands for a better life, then there is a clash.

There is a fancy theological term for this gravitational pull. It’s ‘Incurvatus in se’

Incurvatus in se

‘Incurvatus in se’ is Latin for “turned/curved inward on oneself.” It’s like a gravitational pull affecting everything I do.

I love others, but deeply I wonder ‘what’s in it for me.’ I give to others but wonder if I will receive back.

I am an empty vessel, and I demand you fill me.

Tell me pleasant things, nice things, affirm me. Fill me with water. I am hungry so feed me.

I am determined to see my pain relieved, and I will do whatever it takes to meet that need.

Some may give it a diagnosis such as Narcissism, but it’s in all of us. This inward curving towards ourselves. For some, you can easily see their curve, but with most, it’s more hidden, subtle, and manipulative.

Of course, no one can ever completely meet the need of the curve. Because, well, they are also under the gravitational pull of the curve too.

Perhaps sometimes, they offer a few drops of presence that somewhat alleviates the pain. But for the most part, we are so thirsty and determined for pain relief that it becomes automatic to reach for the chocolate bar, bottle, online shopping, or porn site. We have a curve that takes us to a cistern.

Where does your curve take you?

God is compassionate about curves.

Are you feeling somewhat down now?

I may well have woken you up to the reality of something of yourself that you may not like. But isn’t an awareness of the battle better than living in a foggy dream world?

We need someone who fully knows the power of the gravitational pull to self-centredness to somehow push against the trend.

Read more here 

Tired and weary, worn down and burned out. You can’t find relief because you have no refuge. So let’s build a storm shelter together.

It’s the noise that wears you down. The ambient, in the background but all around you, stresses of life.

You’re the meat in the sandwich, and everyone wants a bite.

Its the

• People
• Politics
• Media
• Feelings and thoughts

The grind of the grindstone wears you down till nothing is left.

All you want to do is to go to a place where the streets have no names, no postal codes, and there’s no one hammering on your door.

I want to run, I want to hide I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside I wanna reach out and touch the flame Where the streets have no name. U2

My Mothers Bible

The other day I was flicking through my mother’s Bible and happened to come across a verse in the Psalms where she had marked with pen and added a date.

I checked the date with other memories of what was happening in the stream of her life at that time.

It was a time of struggle for my mother.

My father was unwell, and she was losing him. He died 82 days later, on October 3rd. She would follow him in ‘promotion to glory’ 166 days later.

I recently wrote about this in a guest post on Contemplative light – I’m Grateful For Ink

What a stormy time for us as a family that was.

 

Read more here

“The problem is not the problem. The real problem is much worse.” Sandy Burdick

I can still see the look of abject horror on Alma’s face, and the dark brown eyes opened wide as I approached her. I was about to tell her that she was magnificent, and she was terrified.

She was an inmate at a women’s prison where I was part of a team that met weekly with groups of women who were sexually abused as children or adolescents.

In our first session, we always showed the short classic movie, “The Butterfly Circus.” 

It is an incredible telling of the gospel story and the impact of a relationship with Christ without mentioning faith or religion.

In it, the leader of the Butterfly Circus, Mendez, encounters a man, Will, with no arms or legs at a different circus’s sideshow.

While others make catcalls or pull back it horror, or even throw tomatoes at him when the crowd clears out, Mendez approaches Will, leans down to look him eye-to-eye, and says in true admiration, “You are magnificent?”

Will is so stunned; he spits in Mendez’ face.

When the movie reaches its dramatic conclusion, we members of the team get up and go look each of the inmates in the face and say “You are magnificent!”

Alma had seen that happen to several of her fellow inmates and now saw me approaching her.

With that look of horror on her face, wide-eyed, she began to shout at me, “No! No! Don’t you dare say that to me.”

 

Read more on website

The change felt good, but they were also afraid of who they might be becoming. Then they learned that they were not alone and to trust the train they were traveling on.

It’s always scary when you don’t know what’s on the other side. Who am I becoming? What will happen as my new self is revealed? Will I be rejected? Will I be hurt like the last time I stepped out?

For my friend John, this was new ground he was walking on.

Never been here before, and he felt fragile.

We had been walking, talking, and praying together for a few months, and he was beginning to see something change in him.

It wasn’t forced or fake. It was, in his words, ‘Natural.’

Like it was something that was there all along but now seemed to be making an appearance and revealing itself. Like a spring of water starting to bubbe up seemingly from nowhere.

But he was kind of scared about who he was becoming.

He knew he couldn’t stop this internal growth, it was good, and he didn’t want it to stop, but what about how others would react to the new man.

All the scenarios played out before him.

Where was this train taking him?

When you’ve learned some new things about yourself, processed some pain, asked some hard questions, and worked out some shakey solutions, then there is always an invite.

It’s an invitation to move forward. You can no longer stay where you are or even retreat back.

You feel like you’re on this train and it has already left the station of yesterday. It’s chugging along, and you’re wondering what’s coming next.

There may be quiet and excited anticipation, but more so, there may be a fear of here we go again.

In the past, you put yourself out there and showed your best creative self, but people, even your family, and friends shot you down. Instead of cheering you on, you got ambivalence and negativity. No one captured your vision.

Read more here

Are you tired of being the Scapegoat but don’t know how to stop it? Six key steps to stop being the dumping ground of other people’s rubbish. 

She felt like they were making her a scapegoat.

They were saying she was responsible for all the terrible things that had happened. It was her fault. Everything bad that happened was her responsibility.

This was a pattern of abuse she had experienced for a very long time. Jenny remembered as a child that once her mother had broken a cup, but somehow it was her fault. Then, the vicious words rained down.

Now it felt like she was a human receptor for other people’s stuff.

She was wired for it. Anything that went wrong, she took the blame.

Even when they didn’t blame her or say it was her fault, she still, for some strange reason, felt she was to blame.

She reasoned that it must be something to do with her. She was a failure, and so she caused all these bad things to happen.

Jenny had a big ugly, smelly goat bleating in her brain.

This belief entered early into her brain when she started to receive the abuse of others. Then she took it on as part of her identity.

The scapegoat was as much of her identity as goat’s cheese is made of goat’s milk.

Her depression was worsening as the guilt and shame piled up. Her anxiety was building as she waited for the next guilt-filled message to be handed out and for her to take in.

She was tired. Really tired. The goat, and its bleating, was keeping her up at night and alert all day.

But now, she was beginning to wake up to the bleating, blahhing, and destructiveness of its voice.

Read more here.

They kept feeling a sense of guilt and blame for something they didn’t do, but then they discovered a Scapegoat living in the backyard of their brain.

It wasn’t nasty, or maybe in a subtle kind of a way it was, but they felt like they were receiving all the blame for things that happened, and because of that, they were being excluded from the relationship.

Why would anyone want to have a relationship with someone like them?

Someone so terrible as they were.

And it was so subtle, so sly, that over time this inner negative critic wove its words into their deepest beliefs about themselves.

It was a goat. A scapegoat, and they had one bleating in their brain.

• It’s all your fault
• You’re the one to blame
• You never get anything right
• They did this because of you
• You don’t deserve any relationship

Then with these inner voices bleating in their brain, they began to believe that they didn’t have any value or worth.

Nothing beautiful or meaningful about this smelly old goat.

They withdrew, hid, and definitely didn’t put themselves out there because they knew that there would be just more criticism, blaming, and shaming.

They had a goat, a scapegoat, grazing in their brain.

 

Read more at Do You Have a Scapegoat in the Backyard of Your Brain?

   

 

Some people seem to like to rain on your parade, but we can learn how to hoist an umbrella and continue on.

They couldn’t help themselves.

Anything my friend did was negated. Any attempt at doing something special, creative, or different was criticized and smashed with harsh words. Sometimes an indifference, a bored ‘Whatever.’

It wasn’t that they wanted approval, but more so, they wanted to share the joy they found in their creativity.

They had the breath of a creative God within them, and they wanted to share their own creative expression with those dearest to them, but it was routinely dismissed as nothing. So there was ambivalence to their deepest gift.

Something began to die and shrivel up within them. The spark of expression was growing low.

Nothing they did was good enough. Depression, a poverty of spirit, and despair slowly began to suffocate the God breath out of them.

 

Read more here

So why did the Samaritan cross the road? Perhaps he wasn’t afraid of the sky falling in. Let’s not be chicken with people like us.

I happened to call an acquaintance of mine a few days ago. He does some jobs for me every now and then.

As we talked, he said that he had a kind of personal crisis in his life. So I gently pressed a bit further and found out what had happened.

The same thing had happened to me many years ago. In my gut, I felt a deep connection. We chatted for a bit longer, and then we finished the call.

Later that day, I realized that I could have offered a bit more. I thought that I could have invited him for a chat and a coffee.

I thought of all the excuses not to cross the road as such and invite him in.

• I’m too busy
• He’s too busy
• He might think I’m overly intrusive, nosey.
• I might not know what to say

Then I remembered this post you’re about to read.

Read more here

Many of us carry secret questions, and we are hungry for answers, but we need someone safe. Someone secure in themselves yet vulnerable to listen well.

 

When the pastor sermonized my personal story, I felt exposed.

I was once in a small group in a church, where our Pastor taught us how to be leaders in the church.

Once a fortnight, we would meet, talk about what was happening in our lives, then he would give some teaching, perhaps a visiting speaker would chat with us. Overall it was a good thing.

I felt safe. That was until the Pastor used something that I shared in total privacy as an illustration in his sermon.

Now, most of the people in the church service would not have associated the story with me. He didn’t say my name, but there were enough people there to know that this illustration was about me.

I felt exposed, angry, and violated. I had given him my trust, and he used my struggle for his gain.

I never trusted him again.

Another story of exposure. I shared something deep with a pastor, and they, too, decided to share it with others. Then the story gained momentum and a life of its own.

Some people shouldn’t be in positions where they are to hold another’s heart. They are not secure within themselves to keep a fragile gift.

I’ve heard people’s stories, still do, but I don’t share them. I will go to the grave with them. Fortunately, as one person said, I have a very good ‘Forgetter Computer.’

When you’re living in fear of exposure

For many of us, we have questions and struggles rolling around in our heads, but we don’t want anyone to know.

All the internal struggles. If we disclose them, then we’re sure to be rejected, dismissed, abandoned.

So we create an alternative life that is very secret. We don’t feel safe with the ones whom we’re meant to feel safe with.

We think we are the only ones with these struggles.

And if you’re that person reading this, then I want to assure you that you’re not the only one living a secret life.

I think we all do.

We present to the world one face, while all along, we have another world in which we have unmentionable questions, crazy thoughts, and wild passions.

But we have no one safe to express the internal drama, and so we are stuck.

We type our questions into Google, scour the screen for answers, and sicken ourselves with comparisonitis.

We might even send a postcard to at least tell the universe.

He came in the night.

There is a wonderful story of a man who was in this dilemma.

He didn’t want the exposure, but he still had questions. Every kid in Sunday School memorizes the answers he got.

His name was Nicodemus, and he was someone who was supposed to have all the answers, the religious answers.

His role in society in Jesus’ day was that of a Pharisee. He was a keeper of the religion.

But then Jesus came and threw the rule book up in the air and talked about relationships.

We find the story of Nicodemus in three places.

The first is when he came by night to Jesus.

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” John 3:1,2

It’s interesting to see that Nicodemus ‘came to Jesus at night.’ He didn’t want to be seen connecting with the Christ, but he was hungry with questions.

So many of us are like Nicodemus. We are hungry with questions, but if they were to be told, we could lose our social ranking, status, safety, and even our family and friends. We risk exposure if we show ourselves.

The next time we meet Nicodemus is when he is defending Jesus’ right to free speech.

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” John 7:50, 51

The final time is when he cares for the crucified body of Jesus.

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. John 19:38-42

Two men, both living in fear, were the ones to touch the crucified body of Christ. Secret servants.

Are you living in fear of someone or something? The body of Christ welcomes your attention.

By the way, note that Nicodemus brought a ‘mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.’ That’s 34 kgs—nothing secret about this man’s love for Jesus.

The story of questions

I want to connect with people living in fear of exposure.

Someone once wrote on my whiteboard

‘Will I be loved if they knew the real me’?

We could add other questions of exposure.

• Will I be loved if they find out about my porn addiction?
• Will I be loved if they find out about my comfort eating?
• Will I be loved if they find out about me getting help?
• Will I be loved if I don’t go to Sunday church anymore?

What’s your secret that you fear exposure of?

And so we come by night looking for connection.

In the story of Nicodemus, we see a story of spiritual formation. From the questions said in private to being with another secret servant and the adornment of a dead body.

Knocking on the door

In my mind, I imagine Nicodemus sneaking through the streets and dark alleys. Then, finally, he comes to the place where Jesus was resting.

He knocks on the door, waits, hides in the shadows, the door opens, and he quickly dashes in.

Jesus and his followers look to see a man,  a pharisee, and they wonder.

He has his questions. Is it safe to speak? Is there a traitor in the room?

He moves close to Jesus and with a whisper begins his carefully prepared question.

But Jesus throws him questions about his question. It’s a style of opening the heart for a deeper connection. Jesus is a master at this style of meeting the heart.

By the way, Jesus still throws us questions that invite us to walk on water.

When we come with our deepest secrets to God, we come to one who is fully aware of the whole of our story. God knows more about our story than we know ourselves. Therefore, nothing surprises God, and nothing will shock them.

God is not one to expose us to the darkness and the frigidity of nakedness.

They clothe us with compassion and love. They envelop us with community. They don’t throw us to the opinions and judgments of humanity. They don’t have a judge’s gavel ready to fall upon the tenderness of a secret.

Being the one that welcomes

I need someone to welcome my mystery—all those secrets, questions, and fears.

Not someone to spread the word and to pick up a megaphone.

I also don’t want someone to give me a quick answer—the textbook solution. More so, I want someone to explore the secrets and offer me other questions that journey me down new paths.

Isn’t this what Jesus did with so many?

He spoke in parables and stories about wheat and wind, hidden treasures, and lost coins.

Stories were told to confuse those listening with logic, but to those listening with the heart, a hungry heart, there was allurement for more.

How it works here

Do you fear exposure?

How it works here on Turning the Page is that you can knock on my door by sending me an email. It’s as private as that. 

You can also access all the books, courses, and conversations with me on a Pay What You Want basis, which includes Free, just if someone is watching your bank account and you don’t want them to know.

I am trusting in a God of a bigger economic providence than what humanity is constraining itself to.

You can come out of the dark here; you don’t need to be alone anymore.

Quotes to consider

• Grace shows up when logic breaks down. Richard Rohr
• Love acts like a giant magnet that pulls out of us, like iron filings, every recorded injury, every scar. Terrence Real
•  Integrity is often a willingness to hold the dark side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or projecting our anxiety elsewhere. Richard Rohr. Eager to Love
•  “Sensitive listeners respond to comments with words that convey an interest in hearing more, sentences that open the door to information.  Words that open doors transmit two messages: 1. ‘I am interested in whatever you have to say.’ 2. ‘I will accept you regardless of what you say.'” Larry Crabb

Questions to answer

1. When have you felt exposed?
2. What are the secrets that you want to have someone listen to with openness and love?
3. What would it be like to be in the room where Jesus and Nicodemus are in conversation?

Further reading

 

Barry Pearman

Photo by Ashley Light on Unsplash

Life has many struggles, but with a champion, someone who will walk and talk, we have someone who reminds us of our progress and gives us hope.

I was recently talking with someone about the struggles in their life. We had walked many a mile together over the years.

As we talked, I asked if they remembered how they were five years ago. We actually rated some of their feelings. Five years ago, it was a 9 out of 10 struggle, but now it was 2 out of 10.

They looked up with a sense of realization. Things had actually changed. Some of the issues they faced back then hadn’t changed that much, but many of them had.

From this, they took a great deal of encouragement, and I did too.

For them, the deepest parts of their journey had not been seen by many. They didn’t want others to know. But there were a few special people, such as myself, that they had let into their private dark hole.

In my eyes, they were a superhero. Very few went where they went. Now they were strong in ways unimaginable a few years ago.

Noticing the progress

Have you ever been to a forest, and all you see are the trees, the obstacles, and maybe a faint path to follow?

Your attention gets consumed by what is all around you.

You forget about how far you’ve come. Sure, you might feel it in your body. Aches and pains, but all you know is the depth and darkness of the forest.

That is until you climb a hill, or there is a break in the trees, and you can look back and see how far you’ve come. You’re amazed at the progress from placing one foot in front of another—one millimeter at a time.

There is a saying, ‘You can’t see the forest for the trees. ‘

I would also say you can’t see the progress for the trees.

The depth of the present struggle is so all-consuming that there is no pause to take in the wonder of where you’ve come from.

A champion walking alongside us invites us to take a break, have a sip of water and celebrate the progress.

I think it’s so important to have people in our lives that in various ways, can lift us out of the daily battle with the trees, the brush, and the weeds.

They point out how far we have come and offer us a perspective about where we are going.

Then it’s back to the millimeter by millimeter bush-bashing through the shrubbery of weeds and wilderness.

There can be loneliness to this journey.

One of the features of many people’s journey is loneliness. You feel that no one is there with you.

Possibly you might have friends and family, but there you are with your happy mask because you don’t want anyone else to know the deep struggle you’re going through.

So you’re alone.

You may have reached out, been dismissed, felt overlooked, and disregarded. No one gets you.

You wonder why you’re so self-focused. Isnt that selfishness?

Surely others have it worse off than you.  Maybe they do, but actually, you don’t know. Your journey is your journey.

You trudge on seeing the trees, the weeds, the struggle.

The champion in your family

There is an interesting little verse in the Psalms.

God places the lonely in families Psalm 68:6

This is not so much a family of mum, dad, and the kids. More so, it is a nest of relationships where we can call home.

I have a champion in my family nest. Actually, I might have more than one.

This is not someone who has a big shiny winners cup but more so someone who desires to champion me.

A champion is someone who supports or defends a person or cause.

Think of these champions

• • Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement
  • Nelson Mandela and the Anti-apartheid movement
  • Kate Shepherd and the women’s suffrage movement
  • Bill Sinclair and his support of John Bishop
  • Mary Smith and her commitment to her friend Jenny Bertland

You probably don’t know the last two champion names on the list. I don’t know them either. They are fictitious. I made them up.

But you probably do know people like them.

People who walk alongside someone and encourage them when they can’t see the forest for the trees. They can’t see the progress for the weeds.

We all need a Mental health champion.

I recently had a champion share some very kind words with me. It filled my heart like a breathe of fresh air fills the lungs.

I sucked it in and let it seep in deep.

They weren’t trite words. Instead, they were words crafted out of a known awareness of being in a battle themselves. They knew the walk and so could talk the walk.

I needed that.

Into the pool room – my encouragement journal – went their words.

 

I believe we all need people who will regularly come alongside and pour words of life into the dry and parched areas of the soul. People who have taken the time to watch and listen.

Friends who will champion us as a person of great worth and value.

Let’s walk and talk

We need more Bills and Marys to walk and talk with Johns and Jennys.

Champions.

We have a mental health crisis, and I believe much of it could be addressed by people learning how to walk and talk.

Sharing some wisdom, crying together, laughing.

Reflecting on progress made in life because there were simple conversations and words of encouragement.

I wonder what would happen if all of us would say to one other person, I want to walk and talk with you and be your champion?

Quotes to consider

• The word encouragement has its root in the Latin word cor, which literally means “heart”. So does the word courage.  To have courage means to have heart. To encourage – to provide with or give courage – literally means to give others heart. James Kouzes and Barry Posner – Encouraging the Heart
• Research teaches us that the capacity to reach out to others for help in dealing with fear and pain is the best single remedy for emotional injury.  Whether the person is struggling with the effects of combat, rape, or childhood injury, the best predictor of trauma resolution is good social support. Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It.
• Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one. C.S. Lewis
• Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend. Albert Camus
• Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Mother Teresa
•  Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good. John Milton
• “There is a soul yonder which is lonely.” And he added, deep in his own mind, “I owe him a visit.” The priest in Les Miserables  Victor Hugo
• Real encouragement occurs when words are spoken from a heart of love to another’s recognized fear.  Larry Crabb
• Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. Desmond Tutu

Questions to answer

1. Who has been a champion for you?
2. What are the qualities of a good champion?
3. Are you able to look back and see the progress?

Further reading

Do You Feel Alone in Your Struggle?

God Sets the Lonely in Families

Why Men Don’t Talk. 26 Reasons for Silence

Barry Pearman

Photo by Malte Schmidt on Unsplash

‘I’m not religious’ is something many say, but religion is a place of reconnection and realignment. Good mental health grows in a healthy religious experience.

Say the word ‘Religion,’ and you’ll get lots of reactions.

The word ‘Religion’ can a springboard to thoughts of rules, regulations, rituals, commitments, vows, attendance at meetings, obedience, hierarchy, and people often wearing funny-looking clothes.

Religion is often seen as a straightjacket to freedom. You must do certain things to get right with God and be part of the group.

But I think we are all prone to want to find a religion of our own, even making a religion we can call home.

Let’s look into the word religion a bit deeper.

The reconnect of Religion.

If we look into the history of the word, we find that it comes from two words  re-ligare, i.e., re- (again) + ligare or “to reconnect.”

Re-ligio is to re-ligament or reconnect.

I see a surgeon reconnecting ligaments and bones back into the sockets where they have been pulled out.

There is a reconnection to something bigger than oneself.

We’ve drifted, detached, disconnected, and want to come home to the unity of something bigger than ourselves.

There is also the thought of realignment. That religion offers a realignment to a drifting soul. Here is the path. Walk this way—a compass to follow.

We all have a religion.

Using these definitions, I think we all have a religion.

A method by which we reconnect with something bigger than ourselves. Something that realigns us.

We may not be conscious of it, but it will be there calling us back to a conformity.

It might be that sport you love. It could be a personal philosophy or a political party.

The religion of communism or capitalism.

We all have a religion, but it may not meet in a building on Sunday.

So what can a religion offer you?

Playgrounds and fences

It was a busy neighborhood, and cars, buses, and trucks drove many of the streets. But there was no place for the children to play, to have fun, explore, climb, fall and kick a ball.

Nowhere for lovers to walk and children to make friends.

So the parents got together and found an empty area in the middle of their neighborhood and petitioned the town council to create a park full of swings, jumps, and climbing frames.

It was agreed, and the building began.

Trees were planted, a water fountain installed, flower gardens, picnic tables, park benches, climbing walls, poles to swing off.

This was a place where all could come and reconnect to the joy of play and fun.

First kisses would be experienced. Lifelong friendships would form. People could stretch out on the grass and enjoy the summer sun.

But nearby was that busy, dangerous road. It was a huge risk for any child chasing a ball.

So the council built a fence.  It was strong and sturdy and stopped any errant ball or flying frisbee.

Everyone was safe while they stayed within the park’s boundaries, within the fenceline, inside the lines of love and respect.

Religion, in many ways, offers the nuts, bolts, and mesh of the fenceline. We know the rules, the norms, and social conventions.

For newcomers, it has to be taught.

‘In this park, we don’t have wild drunken parties; it’s not safe for the children. And we don’t do drugs. Go to some other park if you want to do that.’

Sadly though, there are many people more interested in focusing on the fenceline and rule board at the entry gate than enjoying the relational benefits of the park.

They may even form committees to ensure everyone knows the rules and that the fenceline is strong and robust.

I once had someone come to me wanting to point out the fenceline, the rules, the regulations. When I suggested we talk about a Jesus story about the fence line, he wasn’t interested. ‘I don’t want to talk about Jesus’ was his response. BIG RED FLAG!

I was inviting him to play on the Jesus climbing frame, and all he wanted to do was inspect the tightness of the mesh fence.

His religious playground was small, black and white, and empty of life.

His back was turned away from having relational fun.

He faced forward like a sergeant major, making sure the religious rules were kept and abided by.

He was trapped in what Richard Rohr would call ‘Early-stage religion.’

Early-stage religion tends to focus on cleaning up, which is to say, determining who meets the requirements for moral behavior and religious belief. Richard Rohr The Universal Christ

And it’s this ‘Early-stage religion’ that gives religion a bad rap. Who wants that!

Sadly, many people stay stuck in ‘Early-stage religion’ and never learn to dance in the summer sun and find their first enduring kiss of grace.

I want to be inside the park to make great friends, have fun, and play.

To be vulnerable, express love to others, and feel the love coming back.

I can’t tell you the number of passionate lovers in my park!

Yes, I know there is a fence, some group norms, but I want to know the friends in my playground.

Jesus was a religious rule breaker.

Jesus was a rule-breaker, well, at least the rules set up by man to codify what was right and wrong.

One Sabbath, Jesus was strolling with his disciples through a field of ripe grain. Hungry, the disciples were pulling off the heads of grain and munching on them.

Some Pharisees reported them to Jesus: “Your disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules!”

Jesus said, “Really? Didn’t you ever read what David and his companions did when they were hungry, how they entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat?

And didn’t you ever read in God’s Law that priests carrying out their Temple duties break Sabbath rules all the time and it’s not held against them?

“There is far more at stake here than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant—‘I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual’—you wouldn’t be nitpicking like this.

The Son of Man is no yes-man to the Sabbath; he’s in charge.”

When Jesus left the field, he entered their meeting place. There was a man there with a crippled hand.

They said to Jesus, “Is it legal to heal on the Sabbath?” They were baiting him.

He replied, “Is there a person here who, finding one of your lambs fallen into a ravine, wouldn’t, even though it was a Sabbath, pull it out? Surely kindness to people is as legal as kindness to animals!”

Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” He held it out and it was healed. The Pharisees walked out furious, sputtering about how they were going to ruin Jesus. Matthew 12: 1-14 

Religion or Relationship?

In that passage of Jesus, what was more important? The following of the religion or the dance of relationship Jesus was part of.

When I am told I am religious, I feel like I am a movie screen, and people are projecting onto me all their views and opinions about religion.

My religion is not so much about following the rules; it’s more about being in a relationship. And in the relationship, good things happen.

The religious rules become the background to the deeper relationship that is happening.

Where you focus, you will go.

When I focus on the fence, I lose focus on the relationship offered in the playground. I disconnect from the ones I am to be in a relationship with.

I stop smelling roses when I start inspecting the flaky paint on the wire.

I stop enjoying the sun streaming down when I am stooping to dig dirt for a new and even stronger fence.

Looking at the fence is hard work. But playing on the swing is fun.

Where is your religion taking you?

Is the realignment reconnecting you with something bigger than yourself?

Mental Health and Religion

Religion has a lot to offer our mental health—that realignment and reconnection to something healthy and whole.

I also know that religion can bring a great deal of unwellness to people—anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, fear to name but a few.

So what does a healthy religion for our mental health look like?

Dr. David Benner suggests there are six markers of healthy spirituality.

1. 1. Grounded in Reality, seeing things as they are.
   2. Awareness
   3. Hopeful openness
   4. Loving connectedness
   5. Transcendent meaningfulness
   6. Capacity for love, work, and play

Is your place of reconnection and realignment growing these in you?

I’m Not Religious but I Have A Religion. Let’s dance.

Quotes to consider

• The essential function of religion is to radically connect us with everything. (Re-ligio = to re-ligament or reconnect.) It is to help us see the world and ourselves in wholeness, and not just in parts. Richard Rohr The Universal Christ
• To the Jewish person, and to all of us who have inherited their wisdom, there was one face that we looked to for mirroring, one face that we keep returning to for validation and definition, the face of God. Healthy religion creates very healthy people. Richard Rohr Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality
• Symbolism, however, always reconnects what has been thrown apart. This probably explains why healthy religion (“re-ligio”=bind back together), throughout history, gives us symbols, images of reconciliation, that heal, that put together what has been taken apart. Richard Rohr Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections
• Religious beliefs, and the accompanying sense of belonging within a community that shares the monopoly on the truth those beliefs appear to represent, feed a basic need of the ego. The ego needs to feel special. It does this by making distinctions that set it apart from others. Possessing the truth and belonging to the small circle of those that share this distinction is like a hit of crack cocaine to the fragile ego. It feels incredibly good. It wraps the vulnerable ego in a luxurious soft fabric that makes it feel warm, comfortable and substantial. But, like a bandage wrapped too tightly around a wound, it cuts us off from our essential vitality. After all, what need is there for further becoming if you already exclusively possess the full truth! David Benner
• Religions lose their way when they focus primarily on the transmission and defence of beliefs and the cultivation of belonging that occurs around these circles of belief. Christians also do this when they settle for beliefs rather than personal knowing. They do this when they worship Jesus rather than following the path he lived and taught. Faith, which should enable them to walk the path, becomes reduced to agreement with propositions. David Benner
• In my view, Christianity lost its way when it settled for being a religion rather than the transformational path that I am convinced was what Jesus came to teach, live, and offer the world. And as a result, Christianity is on the verge of irrelevance to spiritual seekers, both within and outside the church. David Benner

Questions to answer

1. What is your gut reaction when someone says the word ‘religion’?
2. Is your focus more on the fence line or on the playground? What feels safer?
3. Where did you have your first kiss of love?

Further reading

Is Taking A Spiritual Bypass Harming Your Mental Health?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Leon Liu on Unsplash

There was a single tear, and I knew we were on sacred ground, but there was a decision to be made. I chose to linger and listen.

I was talking with a man in his eighties the other day when I noticed a tear forming in his eye. I knew that this was one of those moments.

One of those times where you mustn’t rush past. There was an invitation to a stop and be quiet.

It was a tender moment. A time of standing on what I call ‘sacred ground’ where the other drifts, ponders and reflects on the storied waves of life.

I dare not interrupt where Spirit was dancing him into.

It was only for about 10 seconds, maybe not even that, but then he spoke about loss—the loss of deep friendships and relationships. Opportunity lost to connect with at least one other man. To have a friend.

He talked about his observation that women seem to have more friends and deeper relationships. There was grief and that he had not had this.

And then we moved on. Perhaps we will come back to it one day.

The sacred ground of us

I have been to many places that might have the term ‘Sacred Ground’ attached to them.

It might be a place where some act of religious significance occurred. It could be a place of pilgrimage. Maybe even be a sports arena or stadium where someone achieved some great sporting feat.

We connect ‘Sacred ground’ with the words  of ‘This is where … happened.’

But I also believe that there can be ‘sacred ground’ moments within our conversations. A moment in a conversation where we could say ‘This is where … happened.’

Moments where a space opens up for silence and listening. An invite to intimacy (In-to-me-see) is quietly given.

Have you noticed these?

People are scared of sacred ground.

But people often are scared when they touch the outskirts of a sacred space. ‘Shields up’ and alarm sirens wail.

They back off, divert to other topics.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

The brain, in all its hardwired self-protective goodness, shouts ‘This sacred ground feels like quicksand that could swallow me up.’

But sacred places are the places where the pivot of change happens.

The warmth of a burning bush

There is a story in the bible about a sacred space conversation.

It happened around a fire.

A desert bush was ablaze, but the strangest thing was that the bush wasn’t turning to ash.

It was fully alive with fire, and this drew some attention from a wandering shepherd called Moses.

Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb. The angel of God appeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of a bush. He looked. The bush was blazing away, but it didn’t burn up.

Moses said, “What’s going on here? I can’t believe this! Amazing! Why doesn’t the bush burn up?”

God saw that he had stopped to look. God called to him from out of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” 

He said, “Yes? I’m right here!” 

God said, “Don’t come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet. You’re standing on holy ground.” Exodus 3:1-6

I think of my conversation, and the desire in me to come closer, dig deeper, ask questions and push the story on. Yet the best choice was not to come closer but actually to remove my sandals and be silent.

You need to take your sandals off.

Many people have conjectured as to why Moses had to remove his sandals. Sure he was instructed to because this was ‘Holy Ground,’ but why?

I want to offer a suggestion.

I wear footwear all the time in the garden. Boots, shoes, sandals are all worn to protect my feet from connection to the earth. Without that layer of material my feet would get dirty, and possibly harmed by thorns and stones.

I wear shoes to protect myself, to keep something between myself and potential harm.

I wonder if God was saying …

I don’t want anything to come between yourself and the dirt and dustiness of this place. I want you to connect fully with the earth of this experience. Have no crafted, man-made structure that acts as a barrier.

The sacred ground has an invite to dig your toes into it.

There is a vulnerability to this moment, and you need to be part of it.

What’s it like to walk barefooted on soil?

In that sacred moment

We so often rush to fill the void when someone exposes pain. It makes us uncomfortable.

Let’s fix their problem. Here is some good advice that they need to take I can save them from that They need to be straightened out

You might also swing to your favorite space-filling therapeutic technique. Perhaps, if you’re a counselor, therapist, spiritual director, pastor, you’ve been taught what to do in these moments. To follow such and such practice.

In these moments of sacred ground, you need to walk carefully, tenderly, quietly.

Take your sandals off, as such, and feel your own vulnerability and what rises in you.

This is a moment to wait and watch.

Watch for where they go. Are they running away from the sacred ground, or are they wanting to dig their toes in with you.

If they run, perhaps a gentle question that asks about their sacred ground is needed.

A reassurance that running and avoidance are normal, but that the sacred ground has an invite to depth.

The sacred ground has answers that our heart needs to hear.

Of course, God is in the business of bringing us to burning bushes. Moments of grabbing our attention and pulling us aside to commune.

One Emmaus many Damascus

I’ve recently been reading Job and the Mystery of Suffering by Richard Rohr.

A quote that grabbed my attention was this.

Conversion, which is forever refining the most intimate nature of our experience, is a long, long process. More a long road to Emmaus than a one-time road to Damascus.

I immediately thought of those two roads.

The Emmaus road, where two followers of Jesus walked and talked out the mystery of what had just happened in Jerusalem. Then someone (Jesus) joined them and answered their questions.

The Damascus road where Saul traveled with a hatred and murderous intent to kill people much like our pilgrims on the Emmaus road. Jesus joined him too, with an explosion of light. So much light that it threw him to the soil beneath his feet.

Perhaps on our Emmaus road journey of conversion- ‘which is forever refining the most intimate nature of our experience’ – we also have Damascus rd experiences.

They may not always be as dramatic as Saul experienced but might be classified as little Damascus rd moments. Micro burning bush, sacred ground, sandal shedding, times.

Those millimeter moments that invite us to pause and pivot. Times, like I experienced in the conversation, where my friend was invited to sacred ground.

Those early followers of Jesus walking home to Emmaus had many small little Damascus rd events where they had their thinking gently challenged and redirected.

They were walking on sacred ground and didn’t even know it until the end of their journey. Then they realized how their ‘hearts had burned within them.’

That’s what happens when you encounter a burning bush that doesn’t turn to ash.

Praying for the sacred ground

I am praying that I might see more of those conversational sacred ground moments.

Those little instants where you know Spirit is dancing and weaving into the conversation.

Perhaps there might be more tears—times where I notice the movement in conversation to a place of it being sacred.

I hope I don’t rush it or invade it.

Instead, the invite is to linger and listen. Love does that.

Quotes to consider

• God’s healing has more to do with learning to worship than it does with getting life fixed. Craig Barnes
• The pain of something old falling apart—disruption and chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites and sometimes forces the soul to go to a new place because the old place is not working anymore. Richard Rohr When Things Fall Apart
• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. Henri J.M. Nouwen
• Real encouragement occurs when words are spoken from a heart of love to another’s recognized fear. Larry Crabb
• A good journey begins with knowing where we are and being willing to go somewhere else. Richard Rohr
• Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel or corrections. With such questions, we help “hear each other into deeper speech.” Parker J. Palmer.
• Good work is relational, and its outcomes depend on what we are able to evoke from each other. Parker J. Palmer
• It is usually most helpful to ask questions that are more about the person than about the problem. Parker J. Palmer 

Questions to answer

1. Have you noticed those ‘sacred ground’ moments in conversations?
2. Why do we rush to solve a problem?
3. When have you entered a personal ‘sacred ground,’? That place where memories swirl and time drifts to uncomfortable places. What is your response? Run, take off your sandals, listen?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

Grief and loss are always on the horizon, but we can prepare to grieve well. This can help with the grief we are carrying now.

I am pruning roses at the moment.

It’s winter here in New Zealand as I write this post, and one of my tasks every winter for the last seven years has been to prune around 120 roses in a beautiful country garden.

The property is being sold, so this will most likely be the last time I prune, cut, and snip away at these old beauties.

I probably won’t see the blooms next summer.

There is a small heaviness in my heart.

I have enjoyed tending and caring for not just the roses but the fruit trees, the large magnolia trees, the camellias, and much much more.

The garden, when I took over, was in a state of disrepair. But with love and care over many seasons, it has developed a new life.

I fear that new owners may not care for both the soil and soul of the garden. But I am a steward of this season in its life.

It’s a relationship I have with wood, wind, and water—Sun, compost, and worms.

I am grieving, and I am preparing for grief.

I have grief in me. We all do.

Do you sit well with loss?

There is a time to grieve.

What if we were to say that there is a time for you to grieve. To say, ‘this is the moment for you to feel the loss.’

That sounds a bit mechanical and logical and engineered.

It also sounds quite defined. Like you can only grieve between these times, and after that, then you should be over it.

Grief doesn’t work like that, though. It can sweep up on you and catch you unawares. It can’t and won’t be controlled. Try and control it, and it will pop up somewhere else.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us. Richard Rohr

We all, I believe, need a place, a time, and a person that says, ‘It’s ok to grieve.’

The wisdom of Ecclesiastes speaks to the naturalness of weeping and mourning.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance Ecclesiastes 3:4

Weeping is as natural to life as laughter. Mourning is as natural as dancing.

It’s normal, natural, to be expected. It’s not to be avoided or diminished.

There is a time to feel the loss, and that is ok.

We needn’t fear negative emotions.

The feminine noun

Digging a little deeper into the passage from Ecclesiastes, we see that the Hebrew word used for time is ‘eth,’ and it is a feminine noun.

There is a softness to this expression of time. There is a proper, suitable time for everything.

It’s the welcoming embrace for when the moment is right to be in that place.

It’s not on a schedule or a timetable.  The grief moment is not organized to arrive at this train scheduled time. But more so, it’s a knowing that this season will come and go.

There is an official day when winter begins, but we all know that winter starts when it starts, and spring comes when it comes.

So we don’t rush this process. ‘Eth’ has a time of its own accord.

The pendulum swings

As I write this, I have a grandfather clock ticking away in my background.

It has a large pendulum swinging away inside of it. Back and forth, back and forth, the arc of the ball swings.

It keeps the clock ticking.

Swinging in and out.

I have noticed this about my grief load too, I swing in and out.

I have lost people to me and felt the pendulum’s swing seemingly sit in the dark zone, and then it swings away. A memory swings me back but maybe not so far. Not so deep. Over time the swings don’t go so far in and not so severe.

There is no perpetual motion machine of grief.

But I wonder what keeps some people’s grief pendulum swinging so deep for so long? Perhaps the answer is to be found in our understanding of forgiveness – ourselves and others.

Prepare for grief

How does one prepare for grief?

That’s a strange question because I think we all, to some degree, carry a load of grief with us at all times.

Those little losses, the hurts, the job redundancies, the deaths, the missed opportunities, the failing health, the words we wanted to say someone but now can’t. The broken relationships.

We all carry something that, at times, can feel overwhelming.

Here are some guidelines to prepare for grief.

 1. Be ok with not knowing what the grief will look like. I really don’t know what it will be like not to have this garden in my weekly life. It’s an unknown. I wonder what I will miss the most. What will get triggered in me when I think of the roses.

Thorns or fragrance?

There is an unknowing to much of life, and we have to sit in the mystery of wondering what will come next.

The only thing I can be assured of is that I will not be alone in it.

Jesus, in grief load moment, invited his friends into his garden of Gethsemane. So I’m going to be ok with the pendulum swings.

 2. Keep the good memories alive Over the years, I have taken photos of the garden. Different seasons bring different perspectives.

As I grieve, I will also celebrate the blessing and the gift of that time and place: thorns and fragrance.

Where you focus, you will go.

3. Forgiving the failings We live in a world where mistakes and bad choices happen. It’s part of the tapestry of life.

I try to live with a short accounts book. I don’t want to be a bookkeeper holding tightly to a ledger of rights and wrongs, so I try to forgive myself and others quickly.

One of the little affirmations I have each day is, ‘I am discounting my mistakes before they discount me.’

Grief can so easily become a swirling whirlpool of regrets. A central vortex can appear that sucks you down and away from reality.

Forgiveness can begin by letting the little fish go.

4. Talking it out with someone safe Sharing the load, sharing the loss, being vulnerable and open about a particular memory moment.

This is an Emmaus walk where we talk about the mystery of loss out with a friend.

We don’t want anyone to F.A.S.S. (Fix. Advise. Save. Set one straight). Instead, we want someone to sit with us and invite the stories of both thorns and fragrance.

 

We all have a suitcase of grief. Is yours heavy or light? Perhaps as we learn to prepare for the pendulum swings, it will help with what we are carrying now.

Quotes to consider

• Conversion, which is forever refining the most intimate nature of our experience, is a long, long process. More a long road to Emmaus than a one-time road to Damascus. Richard Rohr. Job and the Mystery of Suffering
•  When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. Richard Rohr
• Those who do not turn to face their pain are prone to impose it. Terrence Real
• In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience—our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” Brené Brown The Gifts of Imperfection
• Redeemed pain is more impressive to me than removed pain Phillip Yancey

Questions to consider

1. How do you prepare for grief? What are the lessons it has to offer you?
2. It’s a season, a time, a period, a pendulum swing. Which image connects best with you when you consider loss?
3. What are the qualities of a person that is safe for you to share your grief?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Life can wear us down, and we question if we are worthy of love. But we need to look to a deeper story going on than feelings of the present.

It was gone. Something had gone from them. And they felt it.

No longer caring about their appearance, their diet, their health. Something deep in their existence had whispered away, or at least that’s how it felt to them.

‘Did they have worth?’ they wondered. And especially were they worthy of love and self-care?

They couldn’t see anything of love or worth in themselves. Others seemed to show scant regard for them too.

They wondered if they died today would anyone come to the funeral. Would anyone say anything?

What worth would be attributed to them?

Worth is 

Worth is such a value-based measurement. So how can you measure one’s worth?

Some measure it by dollars, some by fame. Then there are the medals of achievement, contribution to society, raising a family.

Do younger people have more worth than older people?

Do certain lives #matter or have more worth than others?

How do you measure worth? How do you measure your own worth?

And what about God? How does God measure one’s worth?

But there is Amando

I remember a story from Larry Crabb in his book Becoming a True Spiritual Community.

There once was a small eight-year-old boy called Amando. Small because he had been abandoned by his mother and was dying from the lack of food. Amando wasn’t able to walk, talk or eat by himself. In addition, he had a severe mental disability.

In an orphanage, he found people who loved him and held him, and as they did, he gradually began to eat again and develop.

But when carers picked him up, his whole body would ‘quiver with joy and excitement and say, “I love you.”

Amando was a lover. 

What was his worth?

In our worldy measurement of success, fame, and value, perhaps he had no value.

But to those that held him and knew him, there was a worth that kind of celebrated true love. It was like the Christ shining through his eyes.

Amando’s shake the familiar world of worth that is based on human-based values.

Worthy of love

If I was to ask you and many others if you are worthy of love, then I am sure that I would get many well thought out logic-based answers.

Many of my Christian friends would cite scriptures and give theological answers. Books would be given to read.

Yet, good as all this is, it can leave me cold.

No one has gone to the heart, which can be like a dry, empty well.

The heart can only be entered through deep listening, not logic and law.

Perhaps you’ve been cast out of the group because of a spot on the skin – leper.

Maybe stones are being picked up to throw at you until you die.

And you pick times to come out into town so that you can avoid meeting those nasty tongued neighbors. You go to draw water when no one else is around, but you meet a man.

Now he [Jesus] had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) John 4:6-9

Jesus cut through the conventions of worthiness. Instead, Jesus would associate, connect with, pour out love to anyone thirsty.

He himself was thirsty.

It’s a pretty simple thing to give someone a drink of water isn’t it. To lower a jug into a well and draw some droplets.

I’m not sure she ever got to do this because, well, a conversation began. Perhaps the words exchanged swept them both into a moment of refreshing delight that expressed the worthiness of love.

She saw in Jesus an ‘Amando’ delight flowing towards her.

Your worth

How do you measure your worth, your worthiness to receive?

Have you done enough yet? Have you ticked all the boxes?

Perhaps you need to crush the conventions of worthiness.

Those rules and social norms that express whether someone is on the inside or the outside. Those messages from religious church experiences that you’re a worm and a wretch. The parental put-downs that still haunt you like ghosts.

I like to look under the skin.

There is something of deep value and beauty under everyone’s facade. It’s there, but you have to give focused listening attention to see its glimmers.

Then it invites you to fall in love with the source.

The person may not see it themselves—that special quality, giftedness, movement, a talent that needs to be endorsed and validated.

But it’s the sparkle in Amando’s eye and the shiver of excitement that shouts, ‘I love you.’

Getting soaked in worth

Imagine yourself taking a long hot shower.

You sit there, stand there, you allow it to pour over until you feel it shaking something deep inside.

You quiet yourself until you feel the water flowing over every portion of your body—a massaging of droplets hitting the skin.

That is what knowing your worth is like. Love working into the crevices of your thinking so that old conventions of worth and value are replaced by truth. You are loved and have worth.

You come back to this shower time and time again because some of those old ways of thinking take time to be washed away.

Are you worthy of love? Yes, you are.

Perhaps we all need Amando’s like you to sparkle and shiver.

Quotes to consider

• No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God’s faithful love. Henri Nouwen The inner voice of love
• When you are overcome by self-doubt and self-criticism, the tiniest bit of understanding feels like a full body massage. Rohr, Richard. Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• In the spiritual life it’s much more important to know how to listen than to know how to talk. Rohr, Richard. Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• If how we feel each morning depends on whether people are nice to us, if we can’t be happy without outside approval, we’re not really happy or fundamentally free. Happiness is finally an inside job.We are too often “reeds swaying in the breeze” (Matt. 11:7), dependent moment by moment on others’ reaction and approval. This is the modern self: insubstantial, whimsical, totally dependent and calling itself “free.” Rohr, Richard. Job and the Mystery of Suffering

Questions to consider

1. What were some early childhood messages you received about worth and worthiness?
2. What is worth?
3. There is an Amando sparkle inside you. What would it be like for someone else to discover it and endorse its value?

Further reading

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

When I feel respect, I feel valued, and I know I am loved.  Respect is about love. It is love in action. Women need respect as much as men.

In 2004 a book by Christian writer Dr. Emerson Eggerich was released.  It was Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs. The book became very popular in fundamentalist and evangelical church circles. Eggerich and his wife Sarah became big on the Christian speaking circuit in America, and any copies of the book were sold.

The book is built upon the theory that the “primary emotional needs” for men and women are that men need respect and women need love.

Just like they need air to breathe, apparently. Get this right, and a healthy marriage is sure to ensue, the author promises. 

When this book first came out, it featured at the Christian bookshop we frequently attended, and we bought it.  It seemed true enough.

Several years later, another couple at the church we were attending thought so too.  So much so that they purchased a carton of these books and made them available to whoever wanted a copy.

Whether the would-be reader could afford it or not, they graciously accepted whatever was paid or let the would-be reader have it for free. 

At the time, I remember that it was a topic that my husband certainly identified with.  He knew respect was a major issue for him, and I thought, what woman doesn’t just want to be loved?  

Roll on 10 or 15 years, and I’ve learned more.

Here I am now, in another town, in a new decade and with quite a different way of looking at life. As a result, I no longer agree with the premise of the book. In fact, I think it can be damaging to relationships and might even lead to abuse.

Women need respect as much as men.

One thing I’ve learned is that women need respect as much as men.  Indeed, we all need respect, and we’re all deserving of respect.  And it probably goes without saying that we all need love. It’s not a case of one or the other.

It has become abundantly clear in our present society that disrespect for women is rampant.

It’s probably always been there, covered over by societal norms and not spoken about out loud.   And maybe it’s the same for men, although the way to get it is not by asserting it must be given.  Demanding respect is not likely to get you what you are asking. It could even cause the opposite; disrespect.

What is disrespect?

What is disrespect?

Words and phrases like belittled, not valued, dismissed, not considered, not worthy of time, attention, money spent, snubbed, cast aside, overlooked, and offended all relate to disrespect. 

None of them in themselves truly incorporate that feeling nor do full justice to that awareness of being considered inferior and not worthy of even taking a little effort.  

Respect is often in the small things; it’s in the repeated things.

The stepping back to allow someone to go through the door first. Or holding said door open for me.

The please and thank-yous that we take for granted.  It’s even in those things that aren’t even noticed or regarded, considered so trivial not to be worthy of attention. 

The picking your dirty dishes up and putting them in the sink. Not leaving your belongings scattered around the house. 

Those seemingly little things are often not considered worthy of an attempt at change. 

Furthermore, disrespect is often noted in people from whom we would expect so much more. Partners, loved ones, children, and extended family; we can all be guilty of it.

Those professionals we pay large sums of money to who leave us sitting in their waiting rooms until they are good and ready and to the ones we engage in simple transactions who can’t be bothered to give eye contact.

The people we sit next to on public transport or drive past in our cars.  All are worthy of respect, and all are capable of giving respect.

What does disrespect actually feel like?

So, what does disrespect actually feel like?

I have been asked that question recently.  Now I have to dig deep to find the words.  We’re so used to brushing it aside. 

A shrug and ‘oh, it doesn’t matter.’

But, hold on – it does matter, and sometimes it gets through and gets under our skin.  Or builds up until we explode.  And even then, we quickly clean up and cover up our shame at being disrespected.

It’s not a nice feeling, what more can I say? It sucks, actually. 

Lately, as I’ve been doing my personal work and bravely opening up my heart to scrutiny, I’ve felt it.

In fact, recently, I was shocked by the level of fury and rage in me when confronted with several issues to do with lack of respect.

So I have dared myself to feel difficult feelings by taking out the self-judgment and criticism and extending compassion to myself the way I would to a friend.

I’ve learned to ‘sit with unbearable feelings’ and listen.  And I’ve been able to process it enough to find other words.

And then there is respect. 

And then there is respect—such a beautiful feeling.

One of those commonplace treasures in life that we often fail to see and thereby take for granted.

What does ‘being respected’ feel like? Again, it’s a tricky one to describe, but we know it when we experience it.  It’s somewhere in the being noticed, in the being acknowledged. 

It’s a feeling of I’m okay, maybe even more than that; they see my uniqueness and my individuality.  That person has seen me and has deemed me worthy of a little time, maybe just a second or two.

It goes on from there; it’s the person who seeks out my opinion, takes time to be with me; to really listen, who doesn’t interrupt or talk over me; they do want to know what I think.

The person who speaks highly of me.   It’s the kindness shown. Maybe they know that I’m tired and my back is aching; maybe they just want to be kind to me without reason.

It’s a good feeling, a good nourishing feeling.  ‘I’m okay, they’re okay,’ and the world isn’t just a bad place after all.  

When I feel respect, I feel valued, and I know I am loved.  Respect is about love. It is love in action. And we all need it.

Quotes to consider

• I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or president of the university.  Albert Einstein
• Respect yourself, and others will respect you.  Confucious
• Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want, but be respected – that is essential.  Anna Gould
• Love without respect is dangerous; it can crush the other person, sometimes literally. To respect is to understand that the other person is not you, not an extension of you, not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand the other person as a unique individual and learn how to mesh your needs with his or hers and help that person achieve what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control the other person or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not. I think this applies as much to parent-child relationships as to husband-wife relationships. Love is not all you need, nor all your wife or husband needs, and certainly not all your children need. We all need respect, especially from those who are closest and most intimately connected with us. Peter Gray PhD

Questions to answer

1. When did you last feel respected/disrespected? What did it feel like?
2. Is it true that respect has to be earned?  Why or why not?
3. Do people need to be deserving of respect to gain our respect?

Further reading

 

By Susanna Warner Susanna lives on a small farm in Central Victoria, Australia, where she and her husband have 3 alpacas and a small flock of black-faced Suffolk ewes.

These days she has a bit more time to reflect on her decades as a Registered Nurse, and Mental Health Nurse and her many encounters with people struggling with inner health and how applying healthy spiritual concepts can help.

She enjoys writing and putting her musings into words and hopes these will help hurting hearts.

Photo by Axel Vazquez on Unsplash

Their life was like a ship heading for the rocks, but with new words and affirmations, the ship slowly began to steer in a new direction. Thoughts change when we take charge.

‘Bitch.’

That was the word on the pendant necklace hanging around her neck. I was visiting her at her temporary home. Temporary because this was the psych ward.

She was in there because she wanted to kill herself.

I wondered if any of the psychiatrists and mental health people would challenge her on the words that hung around her neck. I hoped so.

Then again, we live in such a politically correct, super sensitive, non-directive world that maybe no one would say a thing.

I told her that she wasn’t a bitch, and having that word hung around her neck was having a corrosive effect on her soul.

Every day she had it around her neck. It reinforced a thinking track, a rut, a groove. Every day that path got deeper and deeper.

The power of a word to steer

What’s a word that has been worked and ruminated into your subconscious?

Maybe it’s a word that was spoken at you from a very young age, and you have adopted it as your own: parents, siblings, schoolyard bullies, to name but a few options with cursing tongues.

Then you have nurtured that little word, kept repeating it, and every time you made a mistake or stumbled, it confirmed the ‘truth’ of that word for you.

Then you added a few other words. The super-powerful words of ‘I am.’

You created an affirmation. You were firming up the word to be part of your identity.

• I am stupid
• I am a bitch
• I am an idiot
• I am a failure
• I am a fool
• I am a _____ (name your poisoned words)

It’s those little words that we probably don’t say out loud, but instead, we whisper them in our souls.

We have done this all our lives, and now they are so ingrained that they feel like facts.

Affirmations of truth

He was so secure in his identity that he was rock solid. He was and is the great ‘I am.’

What Jesus said about himself

• ‘I am the bread of life.’John 6:35
• ‘I am the way.’ John 14:6
• ‘I am the truth.’ John 14:6
• ‘I am the life.’ John 14:6
• ‘I am the vine.’ John 15:1
• ‘I am the good shepherd.’ John 10:11
• ‘I am the door.’  John 10:9
• ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’  John 11:25

Jesus knew himself. His identity was secure, and it rattled the world.

Jesus knew his identity and shared it to reassure us about the invite he offers to us.

We have a door we can go through, a shepherd to follow, a vine to draw from, a light to shed on our path, a hope, and a future, a daily bread to be nourished from.

Jesus didn’t need to use affirmations to firm us his identity, but we need to. We doubt and get storm-tossed. Our brain is not perfect.

We are in transformation mode.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Romans 12:2

I need to keep telling myself my truest God-granted identity.

The disputing word ‘Yet.’

Some words in our English language act like a pivot, a hinge, a turning point. They offer a change in direction.

Words such as ‘and’ and ‘but.’

I think one other is the word ‘yet.’ It is a conjunction.

‘Yet’ says ‘I know how this is at the moment, but I will look at things differently, choose a different path.’

It’s a word that can be used to dispute our current thinking track. To challenge our beliefs and feelings, and thoughts with alternatives.

That is the way it was used by a guy called Habakkuk

Though the fig tree does not bud     and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails     and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen     and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord,     I will be joyful in God my Savior. Habakkuk 3:17-18

I want to dispute the struggle I am in with the larger story of God’s eternal goodness to me.

Life can be tough – fig trees not budding, no grapes, olive crops failing, failures in the field, and the sheep pen and cattle stalls empty – yet I am going to still trust.

There is a larger story going on. One that I’m not fully aware of but I am part of.

When I use the word ‘yet,’ it is a choice to take the road less traveled.

It’s easy to travel down the road of ‘I am stupid’ because I have done it all my life. It’s familiar, comfortable, well worn, but it will always take me to the same old place.

The road less traveled requires a ‘Yet I will’ siding against my old familiar thinking tracks. To steer into a new direction.

It’s going to feel awkward, strange, a ‘waste of time.’ There will be a resistance you run into as you push against the gravity of the stinky thinky.

From ‘Bitch’ to ‘Blessed’

I wonder what would have happened in the woman I mentioned earlier if she had taken the ‘Bitch’ pendant off and replaced it with a ‘Blessed’ pendant.

That every time she had feelings and thoughts of being a bitch, she would have disputed the lies.

‘I know that my thoughts and feelings of being a bitch come from an old life, yet I am telling myself the truth that I am blessed.’

We have to take responsibility for the thinking paths we travel along.

Daily I am affirming Gods firming words about me into my thinking. This flows into my actions.

Steering the ship of your thoughts

Imagine yourself standing behind the helm or steering wheel of a huge old sailing ship.

You control this huge ship, and the captain says to come around to bearing 185 degrees.

You look down to the compass and slowly turn the huge wheel in a new direction. Ropes move under the deck, and the rudder alters and changes.

There is resistance against the change. Push back. You have to keep hold and steer that wheel in that new direction. Even more so when there is a storm around you.

After a little while, the ship moves in this new direction that you have set.

Changing your life takes time.

That old ship of your life takes time to come around to your new direction. You hold the wheel against the resistance of all your previous thinking courses.

It’s you taking responsibility for you.

It’s building a thinking compass that will hold and steer you to a new and better course.

Are you like a ship heading for the rocks?

Maybe you want to change direction, feel the pull to a new course.

With new words and affirmations, your ship will slowly begin to steer in a new direction. Thoughts change when we take charge.

Quotes to consider

• The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. [This] shades “implicit memory” – your underlying expectations, beliefs, action strategies, and mood – in an increasingly negative direction. Rick Hanson
• Believing all of my emotions is the shortest way into the loop of insanity. First the truth, then faith in the truth, then the feelings will come around.  David Riddell
• In order to oppose the influence and direction of one’s old feelings, a rational mind first needs a very good reason. Without truth to reassure, change isn’t possible. David Riddell
• It’s not enough to simply read the truth, it must be allowed to ‘sink in.’ If truth doesn’t saturate, change remains cosmetic. David Riddell
• The truth will set you free to enter heaven, but first, it will hurt like hell. First the pain, then the gain. First the death, then the resurrection. David Riddell
• Don’t try to dispel a wrong belief. Rather displace it with a better insight. It’s only the truth that can set us free. David Riddell
• If you only tolerate ideas that agree with your existing beliefs, how will you ever discover new truth or identify your own blind spots? David Riddell
• To achieve radical change, I need to call some of my feelings ‘liars’ and choose to side with the truth against my own emotions until my feelings come around. David Riddell
• Your mistaken beliefs are your real enemy and will continue to cause you pain until you find and embrace the needed truth. David Riddell
• In order to oppose the influence and direction of one’s old feelings, a rational mind first needs a very good reason. Without truth to reassure, change isn’t possible. David Riddell
• Your concept of yourself can oppose God’s ability to help you. He cannot violate it to change you without raping your identity. Eventually, we must go to Him to discover who we are. David Riddell
• Give yourself the identity you actually aspire to, not the identity you automatically adopted before you were old enough to know better, then ‘fake it ’till you make it. David Riddell

Questions to consider

1. Have you got a word that you repeatedly say to yourself that needs to go? What would be a better, more truthful word that you could replace it with?
2. How can you incorporate the word ‘Yet’ into your daily thinking and prayer life?
3. Steering the ship of your life takes focused and purposeful effort. What is a simple daily affirmation that you can speak to yourself that will shift the rudder and move your life?

Further reading

No More Lies. Stay Grounded in Reality

You’re Not a Problem. It’s Not Who You Are

Barry Pearman

Photo by Maximilian Weisbecker on Unsplash

We have all been a little one, a child, and we stumble, but we can grow from the stumbles, and we can learn new truth and find new hope.

I’ve heard many stories of abuse, but some of the worst are when subtle little lies have, with organized precision, been sewn into a child’s life. It’s evil.

Knowing the vulnerability of a child’s mind to learning and absorbing new information and behaviors, someone has, with malicious intent, corrupted a mind made in the image of God. Those lies take root and grow into deformed thinking and behaviors far from God’s intended delight.

I’ve seen adults with low IQ, intellectually challenged and disabled, being taken advantage of because of their child-like naivety. It was repugnant and evil. I called the Police, but nothing could be done.

Then there is another kind of abuse—the one where the child receives messages from another hurting human. Hurt people hurt people. The child hears the messages – verbal and non-verbal and believes them as truth.

Words that couldn’t be taken back and words that dug deep into the soul of that little child.

A thinking track is laid down in the child’s mind. A small little tiny microscopic pathway, and then the next day, another abuse is added to the brain.

This neurological pathway in the brain is gaining strength. That soft, malleable brain takes its cues from the environment around it and shapes its pathways according to what it’s been told.

Stumbling blocks and Millstones

When the followers of Jesus wanted to know who was the greatest, the one who got the pride of place position at the table, Jesus turned their earthly kingdom thoughts of achievement upside down. He still does.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks!

Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes! Matthew 18:1-7

Everyone one of us has taken a stumble. Jesus said they ‘are bound to come.’

My little two-year-old granddaughter took a nasty fall the other day and hurt her head. She was playing on a small plastic slide and fell from the top of the slide onto the floor.

She was crying, and her parents comforted her. After a little while, she got back up and quietly got back into life.

I wonder what she learned? Maybe that this world is not as safe as she once thought it was.

My daughter and her husband didn’t maliciously set up the slide with the intent of her falling. It was an accident, but they felt bad for what had happened. They could have prevented it by not having a slide, not allowing her to try new things.

Wrapping people in cotton wool chokes out the discovery of life.

That delightful two old will have many other stumbles in her life, but woe to anyone who sets out to cause her to stumble.

Where has the little one stumbled

I think we all have stumbled and fallen. Something has tripped us up. Hopefully not with malicious intent, but we have all tripped up in our thinking somewhere along the line.

We heard one thing and interpreted it possibly in a manner that it wasn’t intended to be understood, especially by God.  We have interpreted the experience in the most obvious childlike way.

Children are excellent recorders of their experiences but poor interpreters. David Riddell

Some time ago, I watched a teacher berate a child within their care. It was, to be blunt, a shaming exercise and spoke more about the angry world within the teacher’s thinking than about the slight misdemeanor of the child.

But I wonder if the child took the abuse to heart, whether it added on top of any other experiences of being told they stupid.

We all have bad hair days, but we need to be aware that explosions spill over to others and trigger responses in them.

Willing to become a little one

If there is a consistent barrier that I have come across in helping people, it is the resistance to becoming like a child and examining and reinterpreting early life experiences in the light of God’s truth about us.

I think it has something to do with not wanting to admit to ourselves and others that we got it wrong. Or that someone has wronged us.

We would much rather fix the now, but those earliest conclusions will echo and ghost us until we give them a reason for them not to be around. This requires self-examination, work, the forgiveness of self and others, and being open to new truth.

It might mean we come face to face with how we have acted out of our own hurt, which has meant hurt for others. It might mean being honest with our own failings, not just on a surface level but on a level where we feel deep shame and guilt. As I say, it might just mean learning to forgive and have self-compassion.

Jesus said we have to become humble like a child.

Starting over as a little one

I would love to have a time machine to go back to certain times in my life where I stumbled in my thinking.

Where I misinterpreted what happened as a child and put a negative twist on something, and I started developing a thinking track that got deeper and deeper, stronger and stronger.

I want to become like a child again. To have my brain be like a sponge that is open and ready for the truth. I want to be a child in the presence of Jesus, the lover of children. Perhaps Jesus would talk about the many places where the stumbles happened, and seeds were sown into the thinking.

Becoming like a little child – simple, open, soft, and malleable. It’s being open to thinking differently about life. It’s seeing that some of your core beliefs were founded on stumbling moments. Moments that need a new understanding.

Just as when you were a little child, and you interpreted an event in a certain that led you off in a certain thinking track, it’s now time to interpret similar feeling events with new insights.

Rehearsing the truth

Children rehearse things until they get them right. They take a few steps and fall. Crawl a while; then they try again. That brain is laying out a new fiber network. They get back up on their feet and try to walk again. They practice and practice until they walk freely and easily. None of that crawling business anymore.

A child wants to learn to play the guitar. A few basic chords, a strum, and many repeated experiences can play a simple song. Eventually, with enough work and effort, they can play complex tunes.

What are the words you have been rehearsing through the network of your brain from an early age?

Your thinking compass

One of the ways I think Spirit (Holy) does this is that we are brought to places where the invite is given to explore our inner dialogue and story.

Our life gets interrupted by an event. It could be a sentence we hear, a quote, a verse of scripture, something someone says to us, a trauma.

If you’re listening, – Let anyone with ears listen!  ( listening is a spiritual practice), then you will learn to hear the whispers of Spirit saying, ‘This is for you.’

You take that seed of truth, and you nourish it, meditate on it, and grow it into your thinking. It becomes an antidote to the thinking that you stumbled over as a child.

You build it into your daily meditative life.

I have an audio version of my thinking compass that I listen to every day.

I am slowly and surely rewiring my brain. Removing the stumbling blocks and seeing my path clearer and cleaner than ever before.

Learning how to do this is part of my Dig Yourself Out of the Hole course

Stop the stumble

Do you keep stumbling over the same old tripping hazards?

Perhaps it’s time for you to pray and ask Spirit to illuminate your path, to point out the old ways that need new roadworks. It’s work, but it’s good work.

Quotes to consider

• The daily debrief around the dinner table can prevent wrong conclusions taking root in a child’s heart. David Riddell
• Children can grow into their labels. Distinguish between their worth, and their behavior when rebuke is called for. David Riddell
• Labeling children is the most natural thing in the world. It is also the most destructive as the child grows into the label. How does ‘idiot’ help a child to think more clearly? David Riddell

Questions to answer

1. Where have you stumbled in your thinking?
2. What rises up in you when you see someone being lead astray or having stumbling blocks and trip hazards put in their way?
3. Why is there a resistance to becoming like a little one?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Jonathan Weiss on Unsplash

It was a dream, but now it was shattered. Perhaps a new dream was to be discovered, and so we dug deep into what truly mattered.

It was happening again. The dream was being shattered. The marriage was over, the pregnancy test was negative, a redundancy letter handed out, and unemployment was on the horizon. There, in the most honest place of the soul, was a loss of spirit, drive, beauty.

A few years ago, an acquaintance opened up a cheery conversation with me by saying the words ‘Living the dream?’. After some paused consideration, I humorously said, ‘Sometimes, and then at other times, it feels like I am walking a nightmare.’

Live life honestly, and you know that dreams get shattered.

Shattered

Shattered is an interesting word.

I think of a window and how a single little stone can hit the hard beautiful transparent surface and create a crack, then another crack, and then a thousand cracks spread from this impact point.

The glass loses its structural integrity; it bends and flexes and then crashes to the floor. A thousand million fragments of what was once oneness.

It’s gone, never to be seen again—a mess to be cleaned up somehow.

Grief, loss, mourning, anger, all appropriate and needed if we want to glean something good out of the shards and micro-glass dust.

Building your house of lower dreams

Jesus once told an interesting story of two house builders. Both had a dream home they were building. It was going to be their place of security, warmth, and investment. Their house expressed a personal signature about themselves. This was the house of Mary, and this was the house of Tom.

The big difference, though, was what the houses were built on. One house was built on sand, and the other was constructed on rock.

Jesus said it this way.

If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

“But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in, and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.” Matthew 7:24-27

I have dreams for a better life than I have now.

A life where things go perfectly well. Great marriage, happy children, good income, fulfillment, acknowledgment, etc

I build my life around these dreams. I set goals,  work hard, read, manipulate, control and try to make things work the way I want them to.

I am building my house of cards, and actually, to be honest, it’s ugly.

Yes, it’s functional, acceptable to others, normal, boring, but there’s truly nothing of supernatural glory.

Then a storm begins to build. They always do. Rains beat down, and floodwaters rise, and the strength of that which I have built my little house on begins to be exposed.

The sand grains of collected foolishness begin to lose any sense of energized connection.

Dissolving away, I am exposed as a naked Adam and Eve. I try to cover up my vitals. Hands rush to hide.

Dreams shattered can leave us feeling shamed and exposed.

‘I was such a fool ever to trust again.’ ‘Why did I ever do that?’

Rock-solid dreams

In Larry Crabb’s book Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Path to Joy, he writes this.

‘Through the pain of shattered lower dreams, we wake up to the realization that we want an encounter with God more than we want the blessings of life. And that begins a revolution in our lives.’ Larry Crabb 

You’re going to have dreams shattered. Your hopes will be hulled out.

Disappointment has unknown scheduled an appointment with you.

The ‘flower-strewn pathway’ has thorny roses, stinging wasps, invasive weeds, and moss slippery paving stones.

What I want more of

I was in a good conversation the other day.  It was rich with words and deep connection. We shared life.

The person I was listening to was sharing something of her life and struggles. She wanted to be heard. Something within her needed to be known and explored.

A few days later, she opened up even more and told me about her life as a child in a poor rural community. She was rich in experiences and how struggle had shaped her identity.

She had her share of shattered lesser dreams but now was growing in deeper dreams.

I have dreams of having deeper, richer conversations with people I care about. That’s a higher dream. One that excites me.

Beware of the dream merchant.

A dream merchant has probably conned you. I have been. They sell you a dream.

Here’s a definition I found.

A person, [such] as a moviemaker or advertiser, who panders to or seeks to develop the public’s craving for luxury, romance, or escapism.

I think that’s a bit too narrow, but it captures something of the essence of these spin merchants.

Essentially a dream merchant sells you a dream. It’s the promise of a better life if you do this or that. It’s the ‘promise in the year of election’ (U2 – Desire)

In the church world, it can be

• • a preacher passing out prosperity pills
  • healing hype and whipped up worship
  • studying the Bible for more knowledge but little knowing
  • told that attendance is next to godliness
  • formulas for a better marriage, family life, business

It’s building up a personal theology of believing God’s blessing (however you and the dream merchant define it) is just around the corner if you just do this and that. No faith, no mystery, just mechanics.

I taste heaven when I am in rich conversation with at least one other.

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things. C.S. Lewis

Have you placed a second thing in a first place?

In practice

I’m currently creating a short course called ‘Dig yourself out of the hole.

Turning the Page attracts a lot of traffic from people in desperate situations.

They come looking for help related to the dark holes of depression. They’re suicidal. They come, read a few pages, then they’re gone. I hope and pray that something from the website helps them.

But I want to do more. I have so much more to share and help that I believe can help them out of their hole.

There is a dream merchant within me that fills me with dreams of helping thousands of people, making lots of money out of this ‘Pay what you want’ course, and changing the world!

That’s a second thing that my dream merchant wants to make a first thing. It’s a dream that’s lining up to be shattered.

Then there is another dream merchant, a poor but wise one (Ecclesiastes 9:13-16), that says do it for one and leave everything else up to God.

If my listening intent is on the dream merchant selling me fame and glory, I will lose focus on the wisdom offered through the discernment of the poor but wise dream merchant.

Ten lepers got healed by Jesus Luke 17:11-19, and only one connected to a greater story. The others had their lesser dreams fulfilled, one taped into something greater.

Some dreams need to be shattered, and I pray that God will smash any dreams that are not connected to God’s greater good for me.

Post shattered dreams

You’ve had dreams shattered. Things haven’t worked out the way you planned or hoped for.

How did you respond after the dream shattered into a million fragments?

Anger? Disappointment? Loss of trust in yourself, others, God?

Perhaps a ‘shaking of the fist’ at God?

Maybe a ‘dust yourself off’ attitude and then throwing yourself back into the fight.

Can I suggest that you ask yourself some deeply reflective questions?

1. 1. What is truly a ‘first thing’ for you?
   2. What are the ‘second things’?
   3. What were the deepest desires hidden under the dream that you held so dear?
   4. Who are the dream merchants you have been listening to?
   5. What dreams do you need to quietly relinquish a tight grasp of?
   6. What might come back to you if you simply let the ‘second things’ go and fly free?
   7. What is a dream that can only be received via some sort of supernatural God intervention?

Some dreams need to shatter to allow other dreams to come into view.

Quotes to consider

• Supernatural goals need supernatural resources. Dr. Larry Crabb
• The greatest blessing is no longer the blessing of a good life. It never was. It is now the blessing of an encounter with God. It always has been. Larry Crabb Shattered Dreams
• Our shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece in a larger puzzle, a chapter in a larger story. Pain is a tragedy. But it’s never only a tragedy. For the Christian, it’s always a necessary mile on the long journey to joy. Larry Crabb Shattered Dreams

Questions to consider

1. What dreams have been shattered for you?
2. What did you learn from those experiences?
3. How would you sit and support someone going through a shattered dream experience?

Further reading

Heart-Shattered Lives don’t for a Moment Escape God’s Notice

The God Who Enters My Shame

Barry Pearman

Photo by Jose Francisco Morales on Unsplash

Life can be tough at times, but to have someone come close and tell you that you’re doing ok can bring deep reassurance and a sense of being centered.

Sometimes you need to be told that you’re doing ok.

They were in a time in their life when it felt like they were in a bubbling cauldron of change. It was bubbling away, and life threw challenge after challenge at them. It was stressful, and they felt it in their body. They felt tired and needed a place to rest.

Then questions started to rise within their thinking.

Did they make the right decision? Perhaps they weren’t meant to be doing this? Maybe they don’t have what it takes?

Thoughts started to spiral downward. Depression and anxiety began to sneak in the back door.

I was watching my friend slowly and steadily lose their way off the path.

I reached out, placed my hand on their shoulder, and told them they were doing ok.

‘Am I really?’ was the response, but looking in my eyes and feeling the affirming touch of my hand, they knew that they weren’t alone.

You’re Doing Ok’

I think we all need people in our lives that can reassure us that were doing ok.

It’s the comparison game that can trip us up. We compare ourselves to others, or more likely to what others present to us.

We also compare ourselves to our younger years when we had all that energy and dreams and goals. Or it might be a comparison to some future years where we have dreams and aspirations but seemingly never come to be.

But to be ok, in this present moment as you read this, well, that is the secret.

We all need someone who can understand the story and appreciate the work of life.

Someone who can say, ‘I see you, I know you, I am with you, and you’re doing ok.’

This isn’t rocket science either. It doesn’t take much to offer the other person a ‘with you’ moment.

That ‘With you’ moment

There is one phrase that covers the whole story of the Bible. It’s part of the BIG STORY. The meta-narrative that our little stories of three score years plus ten (more or less) comprise a stage scene.

It’s the ‘with you’ moment. In prosperity and poverty, in anxiety and depression, in moments where you feel completely abandoned and alone, in times of betrayal, loss, shame, guilt, and pain. There is one whisper that shouts through creation.

‘I am with you.’

I tangibly feel it when another flawed and failing human being reaches out a hand, listens to the story, touches my heart, and says, ‘You’re doing ok.

It’s a grounding in the reality of us all being on a darkly lit path.

What do they know

You may scream internally at these three words. ‘Well, what do they know! Do they know about this and that?

They may not know all the dirt you have to shovel through, but perhaps what they are offering is that from their limited point of view that they want to offer a gift of solidarity, not solutions.

This may be the time where you can ask if you can share something of the ongoing story. The struggle of the moment. That expression of not feeling ok.

Discovering a ‘warm your heart’ walk

It’s a beautiful story of two travelers who were not doing ok. They were hurting and confused. They had seen an innocent man put to death. Crucified.

In their struggle, one came alongside and expressed that they were doing ok in light of all the struggle. They had a ‘with you’ moment of warm fellowship.

That same day two of them were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem.

They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was.

He asked, “What’s this you’re discussing so intently as you walk along?”

They just stood there, long-faced, like they had lost their best friend. Luke 24:13-35

Sometimes we don’t recognize the stranger that comes alongside us and offers us that heartfelt compansion in the ‘You’re doing ok’ community.

There is a desire still in the heart of the Christ to come alongside the weary, the confused, the downtrodden. Perhaps Jesus comes in the presence of someone like you.

Oh yes, and there are times when people are not doing ok, and you need to be equally gentle and loving and show a storied interest in the path they are on.

 Quotes to consider

• The lamp for our path illumines our next step but leaves much ahead, beside, and behind in darkness. Change from the inside out will always be, in the final analysis, a work of God and must therefore remain a mystery. Remembering this can help us keep realistic expectations of any teaching on change as well as reverence for the God whose ways are far above ours. Larry Crabb Inside Out.
• Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles
• No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God’s faithful love. Henri Nouwen inner voice of love
• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. Henri J.M. Nouwen

Questions to consider

1. Who in your life needs to hear the words ‘You’re doing ok?
2. Why do we strive for independence when we were created for interdependence?
3. What would it be like to be told that ‘You’re doing ok?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

There is a mask or even a mist that we can see something quite wondrous when we see behind or through, but it takes awareness to see the vision of what they are becoming.

There is a drive I take every week to a farm and garden out in the countryside. I leave home early in the morning when it is dark and often arrive at daybreak.

It’s a beautiful drive going over hills, through valleys, and besides a stream with sailboats nestled into wooded banks. But it’s particularly beautiful on those mornings when there is a little bit of mist just sitting above the paddocks and on the river. I have to stop and quietly soak in the beauty.

As the sun begins to light up the sky, the darkness starts to retreat.

It’s light, its movement, it’s a time of transition from night into day. The fog sits and clings to the trees, and I know that within a few minutes, it will be gone.

It’s a special time of day, and so many people miss it. They are asleep to the glory and beauty around them. Or perhaps they are busy with getting ready for the day.

By the time they on the same road that I have traveled, the beauty has moved on, never to be seen quite like that again.

We hurry by, don’t we? It takes a conscious decision to slow down, stop, and take it in.

Many people need to be seen behind the dark or even the daylight of their presentation.

Looking a little beyond to the becoming

I like to look a little beyond.

It’s a simple prayer and goes something like this.

‘Help me to see them as you (Jesus) see them.’

What would it be like to have the eyes of Christ?

The eyes of Christ that can look right through all the parades, charades, and games that we all play. To see under the mask of makeup and self-protection.

These wouldn’t be condemning eyes. Instead, these are eyes that dance with delight and joy. These are eyes that affirm you with loving acceptance.

They see the tears, they may even shed a few with you, but they don’t reject or abandon.

These are the eyes that have traversed the dark with you and know that a new day is coming. They see something different from the experience that you have of yourself.

The tender moment

It was a moment in the conversation that I wasn’t quite expecting. Good things often happen unexpectedly.

We had been talking for a few minutes about a painful moment in their lives, and then I saw tears start to trickle down the face. They were hurting, and I felt inadequate. I was meant to.

I prayed, ‘Help me to see them as you see them.’

It was that moment of time between the darkness of the night and the dawning of a new day. The new day would be them shifting out of a deep conversation and into the business and activity of the day.

There was a moment, and I wanted to see the beauty and purpose of it.

Who were they becoming? What was this moment of misty dawning awareness bringing forth for us to explore? I was both excited and still.

I knew that Aslan was on the move. It wasn’t safe, but it was good.

Sure enough, ten minutes later and it was back into functional day-to-day business. Let’s keep busy to keep us one step ahead of the pain of the night and the unknown.

A new business card

I recently saw quite a funny cartoon.

The first image shows Simon, the fisherman picking up a pack of business cards from a printer.

The printer says

‘Here’s your order, sir. A thousand business cards saying ‘Simon, the fisherman.’

The next image starts with a little caption

‘Later that day …’.

In the image, it has Jesus saying to Simon.

‘Simon! from now on, you shall be known as Peter!

Peter looks a little annoyed that he had just got all these business cards, and now he has a name and identity.

This story refers to the encounter between Peter and Jesus that we find in John’s telling of Jesus’story.

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard John’s witness and followed Jesus.

The first thing he did after finding where Jesus lived was find his own brother, Simon, telling him, “We’ve found the Messiah” (that is, “Christ”).

He immediately led him to Jesus.

Jesus took one look up and said, “You’re John’s son, Simon? From now on your name is Cephas” (or Peter, which means “Rock”). John 1:41, 42

Jesus saw something in Simon and wanted to affirm it. There was a vision of who Simon was to become. A rock of strength for a new move of God in the world.

I wonder if Jesus would suggest a name change for you. Maybe a divinely glorious nickname. Something to signify who you are becoming.

Changing your name

I know many people who have changed their name.

Often it’s a bride, and they change their surname to that of their husband, but I have known someone who changed their name completely.

They changed their name because their brother was well known in New Zealand for certain crimes. The surname was not a common surname like Smith or Jones; rather, it was quite rare to have a name like this.

So they decided to change their name because of being constantly asked about their brother. They felt slurred with the association. They changed their name to change an association with a particular story.

Jesus was saying to Simon that this is your new story, and it’s beginning to unfold. Yes, the business cards of fisherman might have suited him for a time, but now it was going to be different. Jesus saw in him a rock.

Who are you becoming

Someone once said to me.

‘I wonder what God will have me doing in the future?’

I felt a little sadness in my soul when I heard this because all the deep work that they were doing in the area of the soul wasn’t about getting them ready to do something. It was more about who they were becoming.

What was happening in them was change, and it was beautiful.

As I got glimpses through the mists of their pre-dawn life, I became excited. Something was beginning to birth in them. It was a new person.

Something, of course, would emerge as a ‘doing’ out of their ‘being.’ It’s only natural that there would be an overflow out of a full cup.

But when we focus on the ‘doing,’ we lose sight of the delicate artwork of the ‘being’ that Spirit is crafting.

There is a mist, a river, a sunrise that we need to stop and look at, and then give thanks.

The vision for the ego

I have heard them many times. A pastor, a church leader, a ‘superstar prophet’ flown from overseas with much fanfare to give out a ‘special’ word.

A word is given, and people are told they are going to be great leaders and teachers. Healing, wealth, prosperity, freedom, etc…

All of this touches the ego and a human desire for more: more recognition, self-worth, self-styled kingdom building.

How many times have people had their hopes built up by overinflated puff balls.  Then it doesn’t happen. Maybe you heard it wrong. Perhaps you need to do more, follow the rules more, give more, and of course, sin less.

It all becomes an activity of doing more rather than the discovery of becoming more. The ‘vision’ and ‘word’ seem to be more about building up the organization than the organism (you).

I get excited about millimeters.

It’s the little things that get me most excited—those little millimeter changes in the soul.

In writing to a church that was at risk of becoming bound up in law and fundamentalism, Paul wrote about what to look for in one’s becoming.’

It was fruit.

What happens when we live God’s way?

He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like

• • • love – affection for others,
    • Joy – exuberance about life,
    • peace- serenity.
    • patience – a willingness to stick with things,
    • kindness – a sense of compassion in the heart,
    • goodness – a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.
    • faithfulness – loyal commitments,
    • gentleness – not needing to force our way in life,
    • self-control – an ability to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Galatians 5:22, 23

When I’m in those tender moments of transition with people, those misty mornings moving from dark to day, I look for the millimeter growth of fruit.

How is patience growing? Are they learning to be kind to themselves and others?

The fruit of love is coming along well, and they are so gentle with their tender heart.

What about the joy that is starting to bubble through the rocks of pain?

A new sense of peace is starting to settle on disturbed times.

Yes, Aslan is definitely moving in this one.

Quotes to consider

• They say Aslan is on the move- perhaps has already landed.” And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it has some enormous meaning- either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.” C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• God walks with us into our fears, to feel them, to own them, to let them teach us. Richard Rohr. Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• A Spirit-inspired vision sometimes includes an idea of what a person could do, but it always centers on who that person could become. Larry Crabb Connecting
• When you’re lovers in a dangerous time, Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight Bruce Cockburn Lovers in a dangerous time

Questions to answer

1. When listening to someone and you suddenly feel inadequate, what is your first response to their becoming?
2. What are you gently curious about in the other? What are millimeters of fruit growth that fill you with intrigue?
3. Was there a little phrase or sentence that spoke to you in this post? What whispered, ‘This is for you.’

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Edouard TAMBA on Unsplash

We’ve all fallen to the oldest trick in the book, but we need to know the oldest truth in the book. Knowing the difference between ministry and manipulation.

I watched them do it. They said a few words, suggested some options, smiled in a certain way, and waited. It wasn’t long before they had what they wanted. They had laid out the bait, and the person had grabbed it.

I then wondered how many times people had fallen to this subtle and sly manipulation. They were such an expert at it. Their success, their control was based on their ability to get others to do what they wanted them to do.

What’s it like to find out you’ve been manipulated?

To have someone use all sorts of little tricks and techniques to further their own cause.

The oldest trick in the book

You may have heard of the little phrase ‘The oldest trick in the book.’ It refers to a way of tricking someone that is still effective, although it has been used a lot before.

You’ll see it everywhere.

• • Those advertisements for the cosmetics that will ‘turn back the clock and remove the wrinkles.’ ‘You’ll feel like your 25 again’.
  • The advertisement promoting a particular tool that you will be able to build a house just like all the other guys, the successful ones!
  • Give your money to this Church building project, and God will bless you with abundance and prosperity (whatever that might mean to you).
  • Come to Jesus, and all your problems will disappear. (Jesus never said that, by the way)

And actually, the oldest trick is truly the oldest trick in the book, the Bible.

The oldest trick in the Bible.

I’m going to suggest that the oldest trick, that sly manipulation, was one that came from a snake.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

That word ‘crafty’ is about being creative.

I know someone who can take pieces of driftwood, flax, twine, twigs, and cane and craft them into a basket. Crafty can be good. It’s creative. It’s twisting, bending, and making something out of the raw materials on offer.

Crafty can also be bad. Twisting the truth, manipulating and bending a few words for them to seem something different to their original intention.

“Did God really say” is such a sly little question.

It’s a hook to open up doubt about whether God is holding out on something good.

It’s the oldest trick in the book to raise a doubt, to suggest a lack, to whisper ‘you might be missing out.’ It’s a comparison, and you’re the one that’s lacking.

I think of the prodigal son leaving the father, thinking he knew better about where life could be found, and then his brother whining that he had missed out on something.

The oldest truth in the book

There is a truth that is deeper and better than the trick, and it’s so profoundly good that we are not aware of it.

Jesus, in the story of the loving father, speaks the truth to the trick.

‘You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours’ Luke 15:31

That was the awareness that we had as humanity before believing the trickery of the serpent, the satan, the accuser. There was closeness and fulfillment.

Satan tried it on with Jesus too ‘You can have it all – if you bow down to me.’

Jesus already had it all and knew it.

Ministry or Manipulation

When I was a child, in the church denomination I grew up in, the pastor was called ‘minister.’ Other churches had priests, pastors, and vicars. We had a Minister. They were to minister to the needs of the church.

Yet so often, then and now, I find many ministers are often manipulative in their ministry.

This, of course, is done with good intentions, but I wonder if what we do as ministers (and I include myself here) is more about manipulation than true selfless ministry. Reaching a goal rather than sharing a grace.

We have a goal, so we will manipulate a response.

• • ‘Come to Christ, or you’ll burn in hell.’
  • ‘The Bible says … so you need to …’
  • The songs we sing, the lights, smoke machines, carefully crafted words, loud music, soft music give the feedback that the ‘The worship was so good.’

Frank slips out of the pews and has a coffee with a man on the street.

Jenny visits the depressed woman next door who struggles to get out of bed, clean the dishes, and open the curtains. She listens deep.

Where do you think the man of sorrows would rather be?

An overflowing ministry

I want to overflow you.

Imagine if you can three close friends. They know everything about each other, and individually they want to outdo each other in giving goodness to each other.

Essentially one of them says to the other two, ‘I’m so excited to know you that I want to overflow in ministry to you. I want to flood you with love.’

The other two have a chuckle and a laugh of joy, and then individually, they repeat back to the other the same words. ‘I’m going to outdo you in love.’

The response is a Clint Eastwood face and words, ‘Go ahead, make my day.’

They all fall apart in laughter then resume the water fight of overflowing love.

They outdo each other in ministering to the other.

This back and forth overflowing is like a perpetual motion outpouring of trying to outdo each other in love.

Oh yes, and you are in the middle of this wash. You’re getting splashed with overflow, but you don’t even know it.

Then a serpent appears and spins a crafty lie. ‘They’re holding out on you. They can’t be that good.’

An ever so slight shift in gaze, and you’re gone.

Sin is not being far from God, it’s turning our gaze in the wrong direction. Simone Weil

Washing feet

The oldest truth in the book came alive when Jesus took on the role of the lowliest servant and washed His disciple’s feet.

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil [read the prince of manipulation] had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. John 13:2-5

 

 

Here in Jesus’ final meal, there was no servant to wash their feet. It was always the lowliest of the servants that got the task of washing dirty, dusty feet.

No one would ever jump up and say, ‘pick me!’

So Jesus chose to minister. That was his mode of being. He was a minister, not a manipulator. He wasn’t trying to manipulate a response, it was a job that needed doing, and he decided he would do it.

Something of the life of communing with Father/Mother and Spirit (Holy) was pouring out sacrificially into the toes, cuts, and calluses of these men’s feet.

Let your mind go there for a moment. Feel the water and the fingers of the Christ work between your toes.

This act of ministry caused a ruckus. Jesus often did.

What’s it like to be ministered to? To have love poured over your wounds, your tiredness, your depression, your anxiety? Ministry without any strings attached. Being foot massaged by someone being a conduit of Jesus’ love.

The fine line

In your relationships, are you more a minister or a manipulator?

Ouch! That’s a tough question because so often, I think we, without any awareness, lean more to manipulation than ministry.

We have a  subconscious accountant’s balance sheet. ‘I’ve done this for them, so they need to do this for me.’

So often, we do things for others in the hope of what we will receive back. When we don’t, we get all resentful, bitter, and turn down the flow.

Questions to Grow in ministry, not manipulation.

 1. What is your heart goal? What is the deepest desire in your heart that you aware of? Ask God to reveal the truest motivations for your actions.

 2. Where are you being filled? If you’re giving out all time, you will become tired and fatigued.

What fills your cup? For Jesus, it was a retreat to the mountains.

Do you have people in your life that seem to naturally want to minister into the toes and crevices of your daily dusty walk?

How does God minister into your tiredness?

3. Do you have personal lines of love and respect? It’s ok to have limits to how much you can minister. Jesus didn’t minister to everyone; he knew his personal earthbound limitations.

So out of love and respect for himself, he was focused on what he could and couldn’t do. It’s ok to say ‘No’ or ‘Not at this moment.’

4. How are you a conduit between the goodness of God and the needs of others? Imagine yourself as being like a piece of pipe, and the goodness of God is flowing through you and pouring out into others.

You pour God’s love out to others through your words and deeds. In the pouring, you see a refreshment coming to you personally from God.

You take care of the pipeline and maintain its strength and integrity.

1. That’s always the challenge. Am I in ministry mode or manipulation? Am I operating out of the purest of motivations?

It’s a fine line that only Spirit (Holy) can help you with.

Quotes to consider

• Husbands and wives are to regard marriage as an opportunity to minister in a unique and special way to another human being, to be used of God to bring their spouses into a more satisfying appreciation of their worth as persons who are secure and significant in Jesus Christ. Larry Crabb Marriage Builder
• The power of God is indispensable to altering one’s commitments meaningfully. Until I am aware that my needs are already met in Christ, I will be motivated by emptiness to meet my needs. When by simple faith I accept Christ’s shed blood as full payment for my sins, I am brought into a relationship with an infinite Being of love and purpose who fully satisfies my deepest needs for security and significance. Therefore I am freed from self-centered preoccupation with my own needs; they are met. It is now possible for me to give to others out of my fullness rather than needing to receive from others because of my emptiness. For the first time, I have the option of living selflessly. Larry Crabb Marriage Builder

• People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. Mother Teresa

Questions to consider

1. How do we determine if we are in ministry or manipulation?
2. What’s it like to discover you’ve been manipulated?
3. What’s it like to receive the purest of ministry, no strings attached?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

They were too naked in their vulnerability. Too much too soon, but with careful listening, time, and respect, they began to feel deeply known.

They had been too naked with their vulnerability. They thought they were safe with this friend, that what they shared wouldn’t be exposed. But it was told to others, and now they had closed up and remained unknown.

When you’re naked, you’re open to critique, you’re vulnerable to both rejection and acceptance, and you’re never quite sure which way it will swing.

So now they share with no one. Everything is masked up and hidden away.

Secret thoughts, passions, desires, longings, and questions (lots of questions) stay behind the walls.

Perhaps one day, they will find the presence of someone that can listen to the naked vulnerability of their story and sacrificially clothe them with acceptance.

The Eden desire to be known

What would it be like if you were to be known fully by one person and, most importantly, loved for everything you are.

It’s probably difficult to grasp this because we are so aware of our flaws and failings but in this instance, try to imagine there would be nothing of that.

Nothing to hide. Everything open and perfect. You would be translucent, and others could enjoy the uniqueness of you.

I still long for the kind of love that we first felt back in Eden.

To be known and have unselfish love flow towards me and from me to others.  A ‘suitable helper,’ a ‘soul mate,’ someone to be ‘soul naked’ in front of and feel no shame.

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:25

I want to be known, and so I open the door and hope someone will provide some Eden interest in my heart.

You see, we still have the scent of the Garden wafting deeply through our subconscious. We want to be known, but often we feel unknown, alone, invisible, and sadly a kind indifference from others.

It’s not self-centered this desire to be known.

You may well be thinking that this desire to be known sounds very selfish. That it’s all about you and meeting your needs.

But it’s not because you were made and created in the spirit of deep community. We were made for translucent communion with each other.

Deep in your heart, you also want to know at least one other person where you can commune with oneness. You want to meet them in their unknownness.

It may be scary to get to know the other at a deep level. It might hurt and push some of your own buttons. But deep down, you want to know them and be with them in their place.

I was in conversation with someone the other day, and I was deeply and genuinely curious about something they said. We talked briefly about many different things, but most of all, I wanted them to feel known in the struggles they were facing. Not to be F.A.S.S.ed – fixed, advised, saved, or set straight.

It’s now pay-to-know.

If you want to know anyone at any great depth, then there has to be a payment made of time and respect.

I love the game of Cricket, especially test match cricket. This is the game that can be played for 5 days, and at the end of the game, it can be a draw.

I try to describe a great test match as a 5-day arm wrestle where both teams are wrestling to the bitter end.

I want to know the game and everything that is going on, so recently, I signed up for a pay-to-view subscription with a local internet provider to see the matches.

Relationships work in a similar way, and the currency is time and respect.

How many times do we only find out something deep and quite significant about someone after we have walked with them for many, many years?

It’s like we have to pay the due of time and respect before the trust was built enough to allow the other to feel safe to be known at that next level.

A spouse discloses how they were abused as a child. Only after years of observation and trust-building have they felt room for them to be known.

You’re too naked too early.

At times I have had conversations with people who have been quick to tell me the dark stuff. It’s like this is their identity, and they want me to know it. They go too naked too early.

You may have heard about how we are all like onions. You peel off one layer, and then another, and then another.

Every layer reveals something deeper about the person: a new level, a new revealing.

More often than not, though, tears of connection need to be mutually expressed with each disclosure.

When people reveal themselves too early, I want to reclothe them and get to know the outer layers first. It’s fitting and respectful to know the whole before exploring under the skin.

Perhaps too naked too early is a desire for validation of pain.

Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. It can be oversharing, it can be shock and awe, it can be attention-seeking, but it’s not true vulnerability. Because what you’re looking for usually when you broadcast is validation of pain, not connection. Brene Brown Podcast – A bit of optimism with Simon Sinek (30 min)

James, Peter, John, and Mary

Jesus didn’t broadcast his struggles. He didn’t tweet out the wrestle in his internal world. Instead, he invited a few close friends in.

We find time and time again that he spent most of his deep onion layered time with three men and one woman – James, Peter, John, and Mary.

The night before his crucifixion, he pulled them aside and went into a garden.

They came to an area called Gethsemane. Jesus told his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John with him. He sank into a pit of suffocating darkness. He told them, “I feel bad enough right now to die. Stay here and keep vigil with me.” Mark 14:32 -34

Mary stood both at the base of the cross and waited at the tomb.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  John 20:1 

Jesus felt safe to be known by these four.

John, though was probably the one that Jesus allowed to come in the closest. John wrote the love story of Jesus’ life and then wrote love letters to the early churches.

I think John smelt the perfume of the Garden of Eden reaching over the walls more than anyone else. He himself felt known and offered the delight of being known back to the Christ.

Smelling the garden

I spend much of my time in various people’s gardens. Pruning, weeding, spreading compost, planting, etc.

Occasionally I smell the perfume of a beautiful rose coming to my senses. I seek it out and find it bringing out its colorful scented glory. I stop and smell the roses. I take deep draughts of perfume into my soul and give thanks. I know the rose and am thankful for its exposure.

I often smell something of Edens’s delight in the lives of the people I meet. There is something that I must seek out and know.

They might consider themselves as woody, thorn-covered, and thoroughly ugly, but with time and consideration, there is a beauty and purpose that is expressed and known.

To know someone takes time and respect.

Quotes to consider

• To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.  C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. Henri J.M. Nouwen
• Can you be vulnerable yet? We all need touch and hugs, but first we must take down the walls that have been built too high around our hearts. D. Riddell
• It is only when we are known that we are positioned to become conduits of love. And it is love that transforms our minds, makes forgiveness possible, and weaves a community of disparate people into the tapestry of God’s family. Curt Thompson
• Opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams… that is being naked.  Rob Bell

Questions to consider

1. What would it be like to be fully known by someone else and not feel shame?
2. Who are your closest friends, people who deeply know you?
3. How do we demonstrate safety to another so that they can feel it’s safe to be known?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

It was my shame, but it wasn’t to be carried alone. I had a friend who knew it all, and God entered in and healed the pain.

I was being laughed at. I was only a seven-year-old, but for the first time, I felt the cold icy winds of being mocked and shamed.

The situation was that it was my school assembly and I thought our class had won a prize for some art project. So I got up from sitting on the floor and started to walk to the front.

Within seconds I realized that I was the only one standing and moving.

Slinking back to sit on the floor, I felt every eye was on me. I felt very alone and stupid. Kids were laughing and making sport of me.

That was the first time I remember being exposed to the humiliation of getting it wrong. I went on to have many other moments of shame.

Like a bumper boat being shoved from one intrusive experience to the next, our little life gets bumped and bruised along a passage of painful moments.

Shame can be defined as ‘a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.’

It sounds very technical, doesn’t it?

But shame is very much an emotion. To know shame is to know a hole in your life that is bottomless. You can fall into it and keep on spiraling down.

It’s a cold shadow of being completely alone – exposed, unloved, a fool.

Do you remember your first moment of shame?

That moment when your flaws and failings were exposed. You were seen and not known in grace. It might have come from someone else, that painful exposure, that mocking. But deeper and more lasting are the shame messages we say to ourselves.

There is something in yourself that you loath. A self-hatred festers and poisons your life. It’s a comparisonitis to perfection; however you define perfection.

Your the only one in this ‘shame world.’

Everyone else has got it perfectly right. We stay in our personal shame hole because we may well be shamed even more in the very instance of exposing our failures.

We either hide or we hit. In any exposure of flaws, we either hide away or we hit back and retaliate. What’s your defense strategy?

The God who enters our shame

They had got it wrong, and they knew it. They had stolen fruit from the orchard and discovered, for themselves, that it was poisoned.

I remember my father telling a story one day of how he had been to an area of our farm where some beautiful plum trees were growing by a stream. The trees were ripe with big red plums, and looking for a plum to eat on a hot summer’s day, he looked up into a tree.

To his surprise, two little boys were sitting high in the tree. He called out to them, ‘What are you doing up there?’

They responded, ‘We’re looking for Mr. McPherson’s pigs.’

‘Well, you won’t find them up there!’ he told them.

We laughed heartily at their quick-witted response.

They had been exposed for breaking the rules. They were stealing fruit, not looking for pigs.

In Genesis, we find another couple of plum stealers.

Adam and Eve ate the fruit that was out of bounds. They had got it wrong. Badly wrong. The choices they made were human in experience, and now they experienced the fullness of exposure. Guilt and shame washed into them.

But the dancing trinity did not shy away from their exposure. Instead, they entered into it and clothed their exposure with a sacrifice of something of their own creation.

And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them. Genesis 3:21

The Christ who enters our shame

Fred: ‘He’s coming to dinner.’

Jenny: ‘Our place? Our messy kitchen? He’s going to see our dirty oven and the dust on the mantlepiece.’

Fred: ‘Oh yes, he also wants to eat with people like us – the prostitutes, gamblers, tax collectors, adulterers, loan sharks, addicts, and all the crazies that have been shunned and looked down upon.’

Jenny: ‘That’s a big party.’

Fred: ‘He also said not to make a fuss and do anything special. He wants to simply be with us, enter our world and wash our feet.’

 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:15-17

Here is the Christ who enters the world of the shamed. Not to cast judgment and punishment, but to offer presence to loneliness. They had been shamed by the rocks thrown. Now someone without shame was entering their world.

They were being known, discovered, explored, and touched. There was a deliberate act of intrusive love into their world.

Jesus once had a conversation with a woman who carried a shame load. At the end of the conversation, her response was joy. It was a liberation that led to her telling her whole community that she met with someone who knew everything about her but wasn’t turned away.

In her freedom, she invited her whole community to come and experience this newness.

“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.” John 4:29

We enter in

It may not take it away completely, but having someone safe enter your shame place and not be turned away is a most special gift. To be loved and affirmed deeply even when the shame is known is a starting point for deep healing.

It’s the acknowledgment that we have all got it wrong somewhere along the journey and that the invitation is to be connected at that level of human exposure.

So we take careful yet deliberate steps to defuse the power of shame in each other. We make sacrifices of ourselves so that others don’t feel so naked and exposed. Stories are told, bread is shared, and common flawed humanity is discovered.

You got a face not spoiled by beauty I have some scars from where I’ve been You’ve got eyes that can see right through me You’re not afraid of anything they’ve seen I was told that I would feel nothing the first time I don’t know how these cuts heal But in you I found a rhyme.

And I’m a long way From your hill of Calvary And I’m a long way From where I was, where I need to be If there is a light You can’t always see And there is a world We can’t always be If there is a kiss I stole from your mouth And there is a light Don’t let it go out U2 – Song for someone

Every one of us needs someone safe, a bearer of the Christ, to enter our world and disturb the shame with grace.  To ‘not be afraid of anything they’ve seen.’

Quotes to consider

• Shame is the raincoat over the soul repelling the living water of Jesus that would otherwise establish us as the beloved of God. Andrew Comiskey
• An addict needs shame like a man dying of thirst needs saltwater. Terrence Real 
• I think that is God’s plan – to meet me where I am, in all my ugliness, not where I pretend to be or wish I were; to meet me in my weakness and shame and fear and to give me hope that God loves me, that He can change me, and that He can use me. Dr. Larry Crabb, Real Church 
• Shame causes us to see our identity as flawed rather than seeing ourselves as having flaws. Dan Allender Hope when you’re hurting

Questions to consider

1. What was your earliest shaming event, and how did it affect you?
2. What would it have been like to be deeply in that moment?
3. How do you respond to shame now? Do you run, hide, hit back, or invite an entering in of Christ and others?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

 

Many people fear that God will leave them, but you have a very good reason why this will not happen. God has a reputation to uphold. A reputation of perfect love.

Deep, deep down, I think one of my greatest fears is that of abandonment. That I will be kicked out of the tribe, the family, the grouping, I will be alone.

Like a leper cast out of the town, I will be on the outside whilst everyone else is enjoying community on the inside. The party is going on, but the door is shut and bolted to entry.

Dig into the deep longings of your heart, and I think you will find a similar fear. We were created to enjoy a party going on, not the sterility of an isolation ward.

Yet, so many live in a fear of God leaving them. They have a deep belief that God, having become so fed up with their sin, lack of obedience, trust, and failure, throws the hands to the skies and shouts, ‘I’m done, they’re out of here.’

Maybe a threat of ‘being kicked out’ was held over them from a young age.

Punishment for not getting it right. Threats, condemnation, rules, black and white, you’re ‘In,’ or you’re ‘Out.’

Possibly at a young age, they experienced a deep loss. A death, a parent walking away from the marriage, a belittling of genuine pain. Healthy, God-designed attachments broken and torn away.

Rejection can get its hooks into us at a very early age. Only love can pry it loose.

Returning the favor

I think we often make God into our own likeness.

French writer Voltaire writes this.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since. Voltaire

We create an image of what God is like from the scraps of our own experiences.

Taught or caught?

We get taught certain theologies about God’s nature (head knowledge) but so often, what we deeply believe (heart knowing) is caught through the experiences of our lives.

We remain in the old belief systems until we have caught, or we catch new healthier beliefs.

What beliefs have you caught that actually need to be thrown back as they are either undersized or something never intended for eating?

Promises, promises, promises to never leave.

I could fill this page with verse upon verse of scripture about God never leaving us.

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Deuteronomy 31:8

But do these verses touch that core fear of the heart? Maybe they do on a very cognitive basis, but what does the heart need to hear?

You’ve seen promises get broken. You’ve broken them yourself. So now you’re not too sure about being reliant on a few words uttered.

Looking beyond my shame and guilt

I believe that God uses us as flawed mirrors of themselves – Father/mother, Spirit, Jesus.

We discover new facets of what God is like through the expression of themselves through their greatest creation – us.

When someone who knows my pain, shame, guilt, darkness, depression, anxieties and yet still chooses to love and welcome me into themselves, then I smell the aroma of perfect love.

I catch something of God.

As a pastor, coach, friend, I have had the deep privilege of hearing some of the most terrible things that have happened to people. Actually, once I had a counselor say to me that God has given me the gift of being able to walk into the very dark places of people’s lives and having nothing sticking to me.

When I have listened to the darkness of others, I have been an ambassador of Christ. I have represented God’s ‘I am with you’ reputation.

When I have given the invitation to look bad in the face of love, often people have caught a new vision of what God is like.

Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Teresa of Avila

The reputation

We all know what a reputation is, don’t we? Often it’s negative. That person has a reputation for not being trustworthy, for doing these bad things, of failure.

The writer of proverbs says this.

A good name [or reputation] is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. Proverbs 22:1

A good reputation is important in life. Consistency, reliability, faithfulness. All qualities that built trust and confidence.

God also has a reputation to maintain.

In the oldest book of the Bible, Job, we find a man who must have questioned whether God had abandoned him. His life of seeming blessedness had been destroyed.

Anything of material wealth, health, or supposed blessing had been stripped from him.

Then his so-called friends and family told him to abandon God. To walk away. They misrepresented the nature of what God was like. They were smearing God’s reputation.

At the end of Job’s story, these friends are confronted by God about their words, their folly.

After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.

Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.”  

So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. Job 42: 7-9

God’s reputation of faithful commitment to his creation, the apple of his eye, had been smeared and tarnished.

There is a reputation to be upheld in the heavenlies of our God being faithful to his creation.

Have you caught it yet?

God rejecting you would be like the ocean rejecting a fish. A ‘vomiting out’ on the shoreline of a fish, something that was designed for swimming and breathing in water. You wouldn’t last a minute.

You were made to be living in the full contact presence of a loving threefold dancing family. It’s just we aren’t always aware of it.

The prayer of awareness

Spiritual formation is an evolving awareness. We start with some assumptions about what God is like, and we evolve. Exposure to the new replaces the old.

We ask for more awareness of what God is like to seep into our souls.

Like the friends of Job, we often misrepresent what God is like. So we ask for forgiveness, and God makes it right because God is infinite love and forgiveness. God has a reputation to maintain.

As you pray, ask God that you may catch more of God’s delighting presence around you. That the old beliefs that are holding you in fear will be replaced with new beliefs of eternal inclusiveness to God’s heart.

Quotes to consider

• Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Abraham Joshua Heschel
• The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender. Brennan Manning
• We cannot attain the presence of God. We‘re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness Richard Rohr.
• Like faded paintings on the wall that one never sees because they’ve always been there, so are the assumptions that govern our lives. D. Riddell.

Questions to consider

1. Caught or taught? Some of your deepest beliefs. Were they caught or taught?
2. What grows awareness of God’s forever presence in your life?
3. What happened in you when you read the words ‘God rejecting you would be like the ocean rejecting a fish?’

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Simon Watkinson on Unsplash

It can be so debilitating to be told ‘you need to have boundaries,’ but as you grow the heart, a new empowered strength slowly builds within.

‘You really need to have boundaries’

How many times have you heard this said or even said it yourself?

I always feel a little cringe when I hear these words. There is just something about it that sounds legalistic, mechanical, rules bound, and policy-driven.

Nothing of the heart or any internal depth to it.

This is why I prefer ‘Lines of love of respect.’ It seems to connect better to something that is of heart value. Something that is evolving.

It also sounds condemning.

You know you need boundaries, but you don’t know how to get there. It’s like there is a lack of internal strength even to define a boundary, express it and potentially enforce it.

Condemning because it’s yet another mountain too high to climb.

Perhaps this boundary stuff is an inside-out evolution.

Evolution of the heart

The unfurling of a fern frond is something that has captured my imagination for many years. It’s part of the logo for Turning the Page.

Here in New Zealand, we call it the Koru ((Māori for ‘loop or coil’) and is the spiral shape based on the appearance of a new unfurling silver fern frond.

There is a natural energy that pours through the fern to unfold its inner beauty and strength. It’s an evolution.

There is a movement from the inside out.

An unfolding of its God-designed deep inner beauty and purpose.

I believe that we are much like this uncurling frond. If you try to force the process, you will break it. It’s got to happen in its own time and its own way.

Some words to consider.

• Volution – A turn or twist about a center; a spiral.
• Evolution – the gradual development of something. An unspiraling.

Beautiful Birthing

The most beautiful birthings I have given witness to are when someone has done the hard inside-out work. They have gone deep into the core of who they are and the beliefs they have held.

Toxic negative beliefs about themselves have been gently replaced by life-giving truth. The birth was not easy (never is), but it resulted from something growing within.

The heart is issuing, or giving out, a newness of life.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23

The heart has grown from within. It hasn’t been forced or manipulated; it’s been a natural outcome of doing the work.

Often part of the process is to examine the toxic waste that has gathered around the heart and poisoned its true beauty and purpose.

Shedding the toxic waste

There is a toxic waste that often gets revealed through the conversations we have. The little put-downs, controlling attitudes, self-condemnation we say to ourselves and others.

Our heart speaks out both good and bad in our words and actions.

The heart overflows in the words a person speaks; your words reveal what’s within your heart. Luke 6:45

If we are aware of the toxin, we try to hide it, but so often, we may not even know we have some toxic, poisoned, stinky – thinky going on in our hearts.

Perhaps the groupings and relationships we have, develop and maintain the waste line. I wonder how many in Churches are trapped in groupthink.

Toxic theologies abound. You can read some of them here.

• To Heal You Just Need to ‘Forget What Lies Behind’
• Are you Praying Against Yourself? The Abusive Art of Self-Deprecation
• Your Faith has Made you Unwell  
• Does ‘Turning the other cheek’ mean I have to keep taking abuse?

Growing your heart

There is such a gentleness to this heart evolution that it’s hard to define. But it’s all enveloped in love. Love from others and a growing love and respect for the self.

That Koru of unfolding fern wouldn’t stand a chance out in the desert. Rather it needs the protection and nourishment of a sun filtred forest.

Discovering your truest value and worth is not self-centered narcissism; it’s more coming in line with the way you were always intended to be. The healed heart can issue out life-giving abundance to others.

Our hearts come to have empowered lines of love and respect when we recognize that what’s inside is worthy of protection and nourishment.

When we self-denigrate and put down our deepest value and worth, we continue to have flimsy boundaries. The winds and words of others easily crush us.

Shoring up with sandbags

There is a flood coming.

It’s going to sweep into your home and destroy your most precious possessions. So you gather sandbags and build yourself a wall of protection.

It takes effort and time, but you fill bags and build bag upon bag upon bag.

The waters come, but you have built a barrier, a boundary, a line of love and respect for what you hold most dear to your self.

You would do this for your physical home, but what about for something even more precious – your heart.

Recently I have been building a sandbag wall to protect my heart from the intrusive hurtful voices of others and my inner critic. I have been giving my heart new food to feed itself on.

Affirming the truth about ourselves

Something I have been doing every day for the past four months is to listen to a series of short affirmations I have audio recorded for myself.

These are short sentences that I want my heart to hear and believe. I want my heart to evolve out of these short-spoken truths.

The first one I hear every morning is this.

I am Zakar. I am remembering and moving into my world. I am leaving a mark. I am male. (read more about Zakar here)

Some others are

• I am focusing on the positive/good things, and this gives me hope.
• I am giving my heart new beliefs to feed on
• I am resting my mind on God’s truth for me, and this is slowly shaping my brain.
• I am discounting my mistakes before they discount me
• I am holding myself to a standard of grace, not perfection
• I am building my life on great thoughts repeated over and over again until they are programmed in.

There is gentle intentionality to the strengthening of my heart.

That Koru beauty and purpose within my heart is slowly and gently growing in strength. Winds and abuses come and brush up against it. It hurts, but there’s a depth and resilience to the new me that is unfolding.

Perhaps if I were a woman, I would want to say to my heart these words.

I am Naqebah. I am revealing the beauty of God. I am displaying beauty. I am female. (read more about Naqebah here)

This beauty I am talking about is not about physical appearance; it’s more about a deep inner beauty that reflects something of God’s own beauty. It is a beauty that needs to be revealed to be known.

When we develop these core beliefs about who we truly are, then the boundaries, the lines of love and respect, the sandbags are strengthened.

As we nourish the heart we build our boundaries, our lines of love and respect from the inside out. It’s an unfurling of our deepest self.

Quotes to consider

• Human life must be about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, and teaching impulse control. Richard Rohr
• To shift a truth from your head to your heart, speak it loud, speak it often, and make a deliberate choice to believe it. David Riddell
• The role of heart and mind is to cooperate with truth by opening to love. We need the mind to know the truth of the heart, and we need the heart to know the truth of the mind. David G. Benner
• Real self-esteem comes from within; it is the existential, spiritual truth that we have value and worth intrinsically, because we are here and breathing, not because of anything we have or can do, nor how others regard us. Terrence Real

Questions to answer

1. When someone says to you ‘You need boundaries’ what goes on in your heart? What emotions get triggered?
2. What toxic stinky-thinky do you need to be healed from your heart?
3. What beauty and/or purpose needs to be released, unfurled, from your heart?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Fran on Unsplash

Dreams, visions, and revelations are part of our lives, but what do we do with them? We can treasure them and find their help.

Each night as I am about to sleep, I pray a simple two-word prayer – ‘Spirit come.’ I then emotionally see myself being cocooned inside wide and welcoming arms like a little child that needs deep love and assurance.

I have puzzled over why these are the two words I pray, and I think it’s the desire to enter my new day within the embrace of Spirit (Holy).

See more about entering your day by going to sleep here.

I generally drift off in this prayerful embrace, but a few nights ago, I met a crocodile.

The Crocodile and The Christ

I was going to sleep, well I was trying to go to sleep, but my heart was anxious. Deep thoughts of worry and fear were bubbling around.

That’s when I saw the crocodile. It was kind of a vision, a pulling back of the curtain and seeing beyond what I would not normally see.

It was sitting in a swamp some way off, and then it saw me. It turned and slowly began crawling towards me. I couldn’t move as if I was mesmerized by it.

It was now racing towards me. Mud flying everywhere. That large tail was swishing and smashing everything in its path.

I was filled with panic and fear. I was going to be mauled by this huge beast.

I cried out, ‘Jesus, help me.

In an instant, there was a strong right foot standing on the crocodile’s head, pushing it into the mud. It writhed back and forth but couldn’t get free. Meanwhile, the foot remained steady, strong, and seemingly effortless in its action.

I looked up to see who this was. My heart knew at once. Hearts have a way of recognizing true friends.

It was the Christ. By the way, Christ is not a surname; it’s a title, a designation, a certainty. It means ‘anointed.’

This was the Christ that I think John saw when he wrote his Revelation.

But in my vision, he was tall, thin, and had the appearance of what I have seen in many icons—stoic, authority, strong.

It was the Christ who had been there done that. He wasn’t all macho and superhero; he knew his authority without having to parade it. There was a kind of Clint Eastwood stanch – ‘Go ahead punk (crocodile), make my day.’

I looked again at that crocodile, and it was still writhing and wrestling, but the foot just kept it there. Steady and strong, firm and weighty.

Then I looked at the Christ, and he was holding a scepter in his hand. It wasn’t a fancy one with gold and diamonds, more so it was a plain stick. It was worn and ancient old. But it carried the authority that all scepters hold. It’s was the one scepter to rule them all as such.

Jesus, the Christ, had won it all.

He was not going to allow anything to attack me. All I had to do was cry out.

I felt secure that I was known and held, that nothing could consume me.

This was the Christ of the now. The one who has risen and was ruling.

Dreams, visions, and revelations.

I think it’s important to take notice of your dreams, visions, and revelations.

Those moments where seemingly the curtain is pulled back, and we get a glimpse into something beyond the here and now.

I’ve not had many experiences as vivid as the Crocodile and the Christ, but I’ve had enough to know that they should be taken notice of. To hold them and listen to the emotional message they carry.

As I reflected on the vision, there were emotional components that needed to be taken in deeply. Fear met with overwhelming assurance. Vulnerability is embraced with being known.

The Bible is full of dreams, visions, and revelations. It seems to be a method God uses to cut through the clutter of our rational thinking. Starving Cows, full cows, fiery wheels, spinning stars, all pointing us to something beyond our ‘this present moment’ understanding.

One of my favorites is the eye-opening experience of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha.

Early in the morning a servant of the Holy Man got up and went out. Surprise! Horses and chariots surrounding the city! The young man exclaimed, “Oh, master! What shall we do?”

He said, “Don’t worry about it—there are more on our side than on their side.”

Then Elisha prayed, “O God, open his eyes and let him see.”

The eyes of the young man were opened and he saw. A wonder! The whole mountainside full of horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha!  2 Kings 6:15-17

It’s interesting to note that the name Gehazi means ‘valley of vision.  Perhaps his vision was limited to the logic of the known valley walls. So many are like him.

But I wonder what happened at a heart level in Gehazi. I suspect that emotions of assurance superseded the emotions of fear.

Right brain, left brain.

Are you more right-brain-orientated or left-brain orientated? We need both.

There is a whole science about the differences in the left and right brain hemispheres of the brain. Read more here

Basically, though, the different sides of the brain have different functions.

Healthline explains the difference.

The left brain is more verbal, analytical, and orderly than the right brain. It’s sometimes called the digital brain. It’s better at things like reading, writing, and computations.

The left brain is also connected to logic, sequencing, linear thinking, mathematics, facts, thinking in words. 

The right brain is more visual and intuitive. It’s sometimes referred to as the analog brain. It has a more creative and less organized way of thinking.

The right brain is also connected to imagination, holistic thinking, intuition, arts, rhythm, nonverbal cues, feelings visualization, daydreaming. Healthline

Where do you see the expression of dreams, visions, and revelations? The right side of the brain, but which side of the brain is often used to understand dreams, visions, and revelations. The left side of the brain.

How many books and sermons have been written to analyze and codify the dreams, visions, and revelations in the Bible. We try to make a prescription out of a description.

I would love to sit with some of those in the Bible who experienced dreams, visions, and revelations and go into the right brain experience with them.

What happened in you, Gehazi, when you saw the chariots of fire? What shifted in your heart? How do you understand God differently now?

Going right brain in your dreams, visions, and revelations

I use a little acronym when I have a ‘pulling back of the curtain’ experience. It’s T.T.A.Q. (Title, Theme, Affect, Questions)

• Title. Always give it a title. It is a short story or movie and deserves a title. The act of choosing a title offers insight into the meaning of your dream.
• Theme. What is it principally about? This is a short phrase that describes the topic. If it was a movie, would it be a thriller, a comedy, a romance? Ask God to help you identify the overall theme.
• Affect. What was the emotional affect expressed in it? What were the feelings felt by the principal character in the story or movie? Were there certain emotions expressed by others? What feelings did you experience when you awoke? Describe the emotional tone or impact of the dream.
• Questions. What questions does the story seem to be asking of you? The authors of this technique suggest you listen to the story as if it were a friend asking you a meaningful question. The act of formulating the question/s will give an interpretation.

The second thing I would highly recommend to do after T.T.A.Q. is to simply sit with the new expression. Be like Mary, who ‘treasured up’ all her discoveries about the Christ in her heart.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. Luke 2:19

In that pondering and treasuring, our hearts and minds change and become more open to seeing new revelations of the Christ in our everyday life.

Quotes to consider

• The absolute center of what God does to help us change is to reveal himself to us. Larry Crabb Connecting
• Sleep is God’s contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake. George MacDonald
• If you attend the soul closely enough, with an educated and steadfast imagination, changes take place without your being aware of them until they are all over and well in place. Thomas Moore Care of the Soul
• Causal thinking usually obstructs imagistic reflection. Thomas Moore Care of the Soul

Questions to answer

1. What do you do with your dreams, visions, and revelations?
2. A millimeter step is often required to be taken to begin exploring your dreams. What would that be for you? Keeping a small journal near your bed?
3. What do you pray before going to sleep? How are you entering your new day?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

For many, God can be like a drill sergeant, demanding and harsh, but that is a flawed understanding of God. When we look closely at the diamond, we can see other facets.

If you follow the rules and commands, then everything will be ok. Step out of line and watch out.

I’ve talked with many people about their understanding of what God is like, and after much discussion, we often hone the description down to being one of God being like a Drill Sergeant.

It’s a heart description; it’s how they feel about God. They may have an intellectual knowledge of God being love and compassion etc., but when you get down to a metaphor to describe God, it’s something akin to being like a drill sergeant.

That drill sergeant is going to push you. Shouting at you until you get it perfectly right. There are rules, and you need to keep them.

A drill sergeant is going to break down any personal disobedience in you until you become a machine. They issue a command, and you follow with absolute automation. The army swivels on a single command.

When I was a child, I was taught songs with titles such as ‘I’m in the Lord’s army’ and hymns such as ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’

All very military orientated. Orderly, displaying God as a commander in chief.

When God is both commander in chief and drill sergeant, then you better follow the rules. No room for humanity or compassion.

Your parents, your church

Probably the most dominant influencing factors on our earliest beliefs about God come from our parental figures. Stern fathers and mothers. Punishment for breaking the rules.

Black and white. You’re in, or you’re out.

Then Church (read organized religion) comes with its set of dogmas and rules on living a ‘godly life.  We like certainty and direction, so we listen to the preacher and the Sunday school teacher warning us about the perils of stepping out of rank.

I remember from childhood days seeing pictures of people being thrown into Hell’s fires and multi-horned beasts. Some highly creative artists had drawn Revelation’s book into a weekly digest useful for scaring small children!

We’re all looking for someone.

I suppose we are all looking for someone to tell us what to do.

We all want someone to give us the command of what to do next. Do I pivot right, left, stand to attention, or be at ease.

Certainty, please, not a mystery.

In our hearts, maybe, we are looking for a Drill sergeant—a kind one.

And that is the real need: kindness and compassion.

Someone who will say

‘I see you’re struggling with the push-ups. Here, let me do them with you. And if you can’t do them, I will do them perfectly on your behalf.

Actually, I already have done them, but I know that doing the push-ups will help you grow in my likeness.

Let’s do them together at a grace/ pace you can handle.’

Every effort you make to try and impress the Drill Sergeant God is rather laughable.

He’s already done it for you on your behalf and in perfect formation. No more medals to be earned or brownie points to be gained.

It’s all about love and grace now.

Facets of a diamond

A metaphor that helps me understand what God is like is that of a beautifully cut diamond.

It has many facets or edges cut to give a face for light to both bounce off and penetrate and radiate out of.

Every facet has a different quality, but it is all part of the same diamond. It’s a part of a whole.

Yes, there is an element of God being like a drill sergeant, but if that is all that has captured our attention, then we are missing the whole beauty of the diamond.

I want to enjoy the whole diamond: every facet, every face. I don’t want to be enchanted and mesmerized by only one. Give me the whole of the diamond.

Yes, there are spiritual disciplines that can help my formation, but if the discipline becomes the object of worship, I have truly lost the alluring power and delight of God’s beauty.

Maybe another facet of God is that of a lover alluring us to be with them.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. Hosea 2:14

No drill sergeant there, but another diamond facet of expression.

Where you focus

On our country roads here in New Zealand are signs with a motorcyclist going around a corner. The words on the sign say, ‘Where you focus, you will go.’ It’s a warning about being distracted.

Perhaps with a lifetime focus on God being like a drill sergeant, it has taken you away from knowing a God of compassion and love. It becomes a relationship of doing the right thing instead of discovering a new enchanting facet.

What would it be like to stop and shift your focus for a moment?

Begin to at a heart level, become open to the possibility of other facets of God’s nature shining light and life into your soul.

Quotes to consider

• If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than any solution. Richard Rohr.  Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self
• God’s method is neither to merely issue commands from the general’s tent (do what’s right) nor to improve the functioning of diseased organs (fix what’s wrong). Instead he becomes so intimately a part of us that we want to resist whatever he doesn’t like and release the good things he has aroused within us. LarryCrabb. Connecting.
• God no longer stands in front of us, drill-sergeant style, barking orders. He is now inside us, whispering with attractive authority that it’s time to hit the deck and do fifty push-ups. And now we want to do it, not because the activity itself is fun, but because it fits our nature (we’re soldiers) and we enjoy pleasing our commander (we love him). Larry Crabb. Connecting
• Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Better behavior through exhortation isn’t the solution, though it sometimes is part of it. Larry Crabb Connecting

Questions to answer

1. What is a dominant image or facet that defines what God is like to you?
2. How much have parental figures and organized religious experiences contributed to your understanding of what God is like?
3. What does your heart most need to hear right now?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Carlos Lindner on Unsplash

 

Get a weekly email full of help for your Mental Health and Spiritual formation * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name *

 

 

Share Tweet Share More 0SHARES CATEGORIESMENTAL HEALTH, SPIRITUAL FORMATIONTAGSFACES OF GOD, RECOVERY, SPIRITUAL FORMATION, TOXIC TEACHINGEdit"When God is like a Drill Sergeant"Post navigation Previous PostPREVIOUSBeing Formed as a Little Child SEARCH AND YOU SHALL FIND Search for:SearchABOUT BARRY CAN I WALK WITH YOU? UNDERSTANDING MEN: HOW TO LISTEN SO YOU CAN CONNECT JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST AND GET THIS FREE EBOOK GET MY WEEKLY BLOG POST EMAILED TO YOU Subscribe * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name MESSAGE ME Name * First Last Email * Comment or Message * Submit POPULAR READS

• Why Men Don’t Talk. 26 Reasons for Silence
• I’ve had Enough, Take my Life God, I Want to die
• 14 Proven Bible Verses to Help Your Mental Health
• A Tribute to a Friend – Dr. Larry Crabb
• How to Help Others Solve Problems in 8 Steps
• She prayed to God that she wouldn’t wake up in the morning
• The Lord is My Constant Companion.
• Right Person, Right Place, Right Time and That Time is Now
• Why Taking Personal Responsibility is Crucial for your Mental Health
• How does Reading the Bible help my Mental Health?

FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA  

Facebook

Like  

Linkedin

Follow  

Medium

Follow  

Periscope

Follow  

Pinterest

Follow  

Twitter

Follow MEET BARRY

Barry is a writer, coach, online pastor, and course creator that has a passion for Mental Health and Spiritual Formation.

Get two free ebooks. One about Depression and one about Spiritual Exercises that will help your Mental Health

Being formed like a little child is something Jesus wants us to do, but how are we to do this as adults? Perhaps it’s by surrender to the potter’s hand.

Probably the most joyous gift to our family over recent years has been the addition of a new family member. Twenty-two months ago – in May 2019, my daughter gave birth to a beautiful little girl called Eliza.

We have so delighted to see her grow and develop as a beautiful little child.

She is being formed.

I see her quite often, and every time I see changes that have happened since the last Poppa time. New words, expressions, confidences, likes, and dislikes.

It’s like she is a sponge soaking up everything her world has to offer.

If we were to look into her brain, we would see incredible neurological growth.

New learnings require new pathways, and even now, at this early age, old ways that once served her well are being disregarded with the ways that serve her better. For a brief time, it was crawling, but now that has been superseded by walking. Soon she will be running!

It’s no wonder that little children need to sleep so much. All that brain activity and change going on. The brain needs to catch up and settle things into place.

I have also found that adults going through times of change, and perhaps deep therapy, also get tired. There is so much unlearning and relearning going on that it takes time and energy.

Becoming like a child

There is a difference between knowledge and knowing.

I have met many people I would say have a great deal of knowledge but very little knowing. In talking about God, they can quote this theologian, that book, history, and philosophy, but there is little intimate childlike knowing of God.

Limited awareness of coming to God like a loving Papa or Mama.

Jesus found this all the time. Even with his closest followers.

They wanted to know who is the world champion of spirituality. Was it Abraham? Perhaps Moses?

Today we might ask if it was one of our own personal faith superheroes – C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, name your favorite here.

Typical Jesus threw them a curveball.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 

He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. Matthew 18:1-5

Two words spring to my attention. Change and become.

Those early listeners would have heard ‘strephó’ and ‘ginomai.’

• strephó – to turn (transition); (figuratively) to convert by changing (switching) direction, i.e., go the other way (an “about-face”); taking an opposite or divergent course.
• ginomai – to emerge, become, transitioning from one point (realm, condition) to another.

The other interesting word is the word for children – paidíon

• paidíon – a child under training

This ‘child under training’ is going to be doing the twist and turn in its becoming.

You’re being formed, informed, reformed, transformed.

I keep thinking of a clay pot being formed on a potter’s wheel.

Around and around it goes. A little water is added here and there. The fingers work into the pot, and the pot responds.

I like to think of myself as being on that spinning wheel. Slowly moving and turning, I feel the influence of the master craftsman against my earthy life.

They have a vision of who and what I will become.

It’s a lifetime artwork for them. They press against my clay, and I respond. I push back, they pull back, they move in, and I move out.

I suppose it’s a kind of a dance.

Something both beautiful and functional is being crafted. I am being formed. I am like a child open to their movement and form.

O Lord, you are our Father.     We are the clay, and you are the potter.     We all are formed by your hand. Isaiah 64:8

The invite

The invite as adults is to become like ‘children in training.’ To admit, some of the things we learned as children need to be reexamined with new information.

Were all your childhood conclusions perfectly correct?

We become like children again and open ourselves like sponges to new ways of thinking. We are transformed by the renewal of our mind Romans 12:2.

Quotes to consider

• metanoeite, or change of consciousness, can only come with time. Patience is the very shape of love. Without it, religion is merely about enforcing laws and requirements. Richard Rohr 
• I’m being formed every day. I’m being formed by the social media that I consume. I’m being formed by my parents. Even if my parents are not even alive, I’m being formed by their memory.  And so the question is, what are the things in the world that are gonna form me. Dr. Curt Thompson. Being Known podcast 
• Immature spirituality focuses on experience.  Mature spirituality focuses on seeing and knowing.  David Benner
• We best worship our relational trinitarian God by actively yielding to the Holy Spirit’s slow and sometimes painful work of spiritually, relationally, forming our hearts, souls, and minds. Larry Crabb

Questions to answer

1. What’s it like to be considered as a lump of clay being molded and formed?
2. To be a ‘child in training’ requires a certain openness and receptivity to new information. How open are you to the idea that not all conclusions about life are actually correct?
3. Who has had a positive forming experience on your life of clay?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Photo by Balaji Malliswamy on Unsplash

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

It was a time to pivot, change, alter course. Dr. Larry Crabb met me at the junction. Larry went to be with his Papa, Jesus, and Spirit on Sunday, February 28, 2021.

There are times I believe that God brings people across our path that have a long-lasting impact on our journey.

I had just begun my pastoral ministry in 1998. I had the role of being a Community Chaplain in a large church where my focus was to provide pastoral care for those in our local area that had significant Mental Illnesses and disabilities.

I was to develop a church community where people could come and feel at home. Teaching, pastoral care, and support that was specifically focused on the needs of this community.

Prior to this, I had been a support worker helping people with serious Mental Illnesses with their daily lives.

Over and over again, I would see them try to be part of Church communities only to see them not truly connect.

Some church people would rescue them, preach at them, moralize them, and tell them to ‘try harder.’

In the end, Churches and the people in them weren’t safe.

I was then handed a book by a former student of Dr. Larry Crabb. The book was Connecting. Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships. 

In this book, Larry also talks about a pivot in this thinking. A subtle shift away from psychology to what he would later call Soul Care.

In recent days, I have made a shift. I am now working toward the day when communities of God’s people, ordinary Christians whose lives regularly intersect, will accomplish most of the good that we now depend on mental health professionals to provide. And they will do it by connecting with each other in ways that only the gospel makes possible.

I envision a community of people who intentionally mingle in settings where these nutrients are passed back and forth, where I pour into you the healing resources within me and you pour into me what God has put in you.

But that’s not what I’m doing. I have strong reason to suspect that Christians sitting dutifully in church congregations, for whom “going to church” means doing a variety of spiritual activities, have been given resources that if released could powerfully heal broken hearts, overcome the damage done by abusive backgrounds, encourage the depressed to courageously move forward, stimulate the lonely to reach out, revitalize discouraged teens and children with new and holy energy, and introduce hope into the lives of the countless people who feel rejected, alone, and useless.

Maybe “going to church,” more than anything else, means relating to several people in your life differently. Maybe the center of Christian community is connecting with a few.

Beneath what our culture calls psychological disorder is a soul crying out for what only community can provide. There is no “disorder” requiring “treatment.” And, contrary to hard-line moralism, there is more to our struggles than a stubborn will needing firm admonishment. Beneath all our problems, there are desperately hurting souls that must find the nourishment only community can provide—or die.

We must do something other than train professional experts to fix damaged psyches. Damaged psyches aren’t the problem.

The problem beneath our struggles is a disconnected soul. And we must do something more than exhort people to do what’s right and then hold them accountable. Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Better behavior through exhortation isn’t the solution, though it sometimes is part of it. Rather than fixing psyches or scolding sinners, we must provide nourishment for the disconnected soul that only a community of connected people can offer.

The crisis of care in modern culture, especially in the Western church, will not be resolved by training more therapists.

We do not need a counseling center on every corner.

It will be worsened by moralists who never reach deeply into the hearts of people in their efforts to impose their standards of behavior on others, even when those standards are biblical.

The greatest need in modern civilization is the development of communities— true communities where the heart of God is home, where the humble and wise learn to shepherd those on the path behind them, where trusting strugglers lock arms with others as together they journey on. Dr. Larry Crabb. Connecting. Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships.

I was hooked.

He had connected with the thoughts and ideas swirling around in my thinking.

From there, I read everything I could lay my hands on. He was my mentor. I traveled from here in New Zealand to Colorado Springs twice to sit under his teaching.

I don’t believe anyone else has influenced me so greatly in my spiritual formation as Larry.

The picture that captures us

Recently there has been a huge outpouring of love and memories on the Larry Crabb Appreciation club. Images shared, and stories told.

One image speaks so much.

Larry Crabb by Janet Trenda

‘A sweet memory from my time at SSD [School of Spiritual Direction]- catching Larry early in the morning handwriting, rewriting- his notes for the day. His passion and dedication are clearly shown here’. Janet Trenda

A special memory for me was when I attended the School of Spiritual Direction in 2004 at Glen Eyrie, Colorado Springs.

I had a very special one-to-one session with Larry. I went into this lovely lounge where Larry took off his shoes, put his feet up on the coffee table, and we had a chat.

Then the thunder rolled. In those Rocky mountains, the thunderclaps were incredible. I have never heard thunder like it.

I don’t remember much of what was said, but I do remember the atmosphere Larry brought to our time. Relaxed, friendly, gently inquisitive, unforced, shoes off, and love.

Quotes

Over the years, I have collected many quotes from the writings of Larry Crabb. Many of which have been sp[rinkled through the blog posts.

Here are but a few.

• • Real encouragement occurs when words are spoken from a heart of love to another’s recognized fear. Larry Crabb
  • God has solutions for people who admit they have problems. Larry Crabb
  • Our primary purpose is not to use God to solve our problems, but to move through our problems toward finding God. Larry Crabb
  • A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one’s own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a “tic on a dog” relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog! Larry Crabb, The Marriage Builder
  • Spiritual friends see a facet of Christ in us and bring it out as no one else can. And they delight to do so. When they see what is unique about us, it causes them great delight; and then, giving away to the powers of daring imagination, they envision what we could become. The vision excites them – with Paul, they see us where we are and feel the pains of labor till Christ is formed in us (Gal. 4:19). Larry Crabb. The Safest Place on Earth
  • Brokenness is a condition, one that is always there, inside, beneath the surface, carefully hidden for as long as we can keep a facade in place. We live in brokenness. We just don’t always see it, either in ourselves or in others. Larry Crabb
  • A central task of community is to create a place that is safe enough for the walls to be torn down, safe enough for each of us to own, and reveal our brokenness. Larry Crabb
  • Supernatural goals need supernatural resources. Dr. Larry Crabb
  Larry Crabb Appreciation Club

  As an administrator of the Appreciation Club on Facebook, I recently asked the members for their favorite quotes and sentences.

  Here are a few of them.

• Where is your red dot?
• “Confused people listen better.”
• May we learn to dance with the Trinity!
• “Put Jesus on display.”
• Make a Margin for Uncertainty: Open Heart: Women are created to be relationally open and inviting!
• “Hush God is in it” by his late grandfather.
• “We have all been sinned against. We all sin. You have failed to love me as you should, and I have failed to love you. Your failure to love me is painful, sometimes profoundly disappointing. But the Lord‘s love for me is perfect. Although his love does not remove the sting of your failure, it gives me all I need to stand as a whole person, capable of loving you regardless of the threat of your further failure.” From Inside Out. 
• Too many marriages are like two ticks and no dog. 
• God meets you where you really are – not where you think you should be.
•  Words that open doors transmit two messages: 1.‘I am interested in whatever you have to say.’ 2.’I will accept you regardless of what you say.’” Larry Crabb
• The greatest lie believed today is that one can know God without being known by someone else. Larry Crabb Soul Talk
• The compelling vision is . . . maybe, because of our conversations, we can want God more than we want any lesser blessing. Larry Crabb 
• “Demand nothing here. Expect everything there. Surrender all rights to justice, to loving treatment from others to fulfilling ministry, to all the good things of this life, and you will be given tastes of the good things to come. That is how you taste the Lord and discover that He is good. It is those tastes that fill you with sustaining hope until you’re welcomed to the banquet.” 
• “Embrace your Inadequacy.”
• “Your pain is the distance between what you were created to have, Eden, and what you have now. Our hearts groan in anticipation of what lies ahead, our true home, heaven.”

Larger Story

As part of planning to continue his legacy of teaching, a few years ago, Larry’s son Kep established a new ministry called Larger Story.

Larger Story will serve as the legacy of the thinking and writing and training and counseling I’ve been doing now for 50 years. Larry Crabb

At Larger Story, they have amassed the many books, countless sermons and talks, and numerous videos Larry has done.

Find out more about Larger Story here. 

Hot coffee and Elvis

A few final thoughts.

Larry liked his coffee hot!

He also enjoyed Elvis and slow dancing with his students while singing ‘Are you lonesome tonight.’

The final sentence in his last book ‘Waiting for Heaven‘ was this.

Over time, anticipate becoming aware of actually meeting Jesus, face to face, and allow the “sheer delight” to move you toward WAITING FOR HEAVEN.

Thank you, Larry. Enjoy the sheer delight of being with Jesus face to face.

Barry Pearman

 

Get a weekly email full of help for your Mental Health and Spiritual formation * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name *

 

I need a nest that I can call home. Actually, digging down a little further, I need a grouping of relationships that know me, love me, and have compassion and kindness when I get things wrong.

The other day I was pruning a vine and there high above my head was a nest. It had long been vacated. I’m not sure what type of bird built this elaborate structure to raise its young, but as I looked closer, there was an intricate architecture to the design.

Twigs, grasses, moss, lichen all gathered and foraged from around the garden and woven into a home.

Here are some pictures of the nest.

  

With the ancient wisdom that had somehow been passed on from bird to bird, there was divine craftsmanship taking place here.  Every little fiber had been laid down for one purpose – to nurture the growth of the fragile.

Our Nest

We all have a nest around us. We may not realize it, but there are people all around us that provide some twig of support. It could be the professionals such as Doctors, nurses, therapists, etc., but most likely, the ones who provide the greatest influence are those that we come into contact with the most—our family, friends, workmates.

It’s a nest, a community. Oh, and yes, we are part of others’ support structures, their nest. It’s the ‘and next to them’ feature we see coming through from the rebuild of a broken wall in the story of Nehemiah.

I remember a counselor once contacting me about one of his clients that needed a nest. It wasn’t a physical nest but more a social-relational type of nest.

His client needed different people with different skills, wisdom, and life experiences to help his client to heal.

He had already assembled people such as a doctor, psychiatrist, and other mental health professionals. Still, he felt his client also needed a pastor and church community that understood the complexities of mental illness and recovery—real people living real lives.

So, over time, other people were added.

People with similar interests and hobbies. Some had backgrounds related to Mental Health, but many did not.

Some would go out for a coffee and have fun with them.

There was a kind of divine creativity going on to the building of their nest.

What surprised them was that they had something to contribute to the nest of others. From their lived wisdom, they were able to add strength to the growth of others.

A Road, a Ditch, an Inn

Jesus once told the story of a man that the brutality of robbers had dehumanized. They saw him only for what he had, not for who he was.

“There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” Luke 10:25-37

There are many observations we could take from this wonderful parable. You can read more by reading an essay I wrote many years ago called ‘The Dehumanising Effects of Sexual Abuse.’ 

Nest principles

 1.There are some you don’t want in your nest. 

In the story, we see the Priest and Levite walking past.

Avoiding, not wanting to touch, and come close. For them, it was all about following the rules, the codes of moral and religious conduct. It was to be seen as holy and pure, but not to touch and know.

Religion can kill compassion. It can encourage a ‘holier than thou’ contempt with no desire to get down into the dirt of others’ pain. There is a focus on Justice (he/ she shouldn’t have done ….) rather than on Mercy and Grace.

We probably all have people we know that are like that.

 2. There are some with ‘Lived truth.’

Here comes a Samaritan. Someone who in Jesus’ time definitely was on the outside of the Jewish society’s moral and religious purity. Samaritans were shunned and rejected.

This parable samaritan would have known exactly how it felt cast into a racial and religious prejudice ditch of existence.

But for the Samaritan, there were no rules, no boundaries, and no cultural taboos that inhibited him from helping.

In his own ditch, he would have learned lived truth.

I was once told this quote by someone who had been thrown in the ditch many times.

Our great problem is trafficking in unlived truth. We try to communicate what we’ve never experienced in our own life. Dwight L. Moody

Sadly, much of my spiritual journey has been influenced by people full of unlived truth. The really good stuff comes from when you get into the ditch’s dirt and listen to the stories. If you want to understand coal, go work at the coal face.

3. It’s about heart, compassion, and kindness. 

I have received compassion and kindness, and it’s sweet good news on a tired and battered soul.

Where we read that the Samaritans ‘heart went out to him’ we see that Jesus was using the Greek word ‘splanchnizomai.’

It comes from the Greek word (splanchna), for entrails, the vital inner organs of a person—the stomach, heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys.

It means to say that he had a feeling deep in his gut, the deepest of all human emotions.

I want the strands of my nest to be made up of people who have compassion and kindness. Not avoidance and judgment.

4. Innkeepers

I’m glad that Jesus added someone else to the parable. Someone other than the singularity of the samaritan. We need others who have compassionate skills and resources to offer in the structure of the nest.

We know very little about the Inn or the Innkeeper other than he was another strand in the healing nest of this broken man.

All of us can be ‘Innkeepers.’ We add various aspects of lived truth to each other.

Your Nest, Your Home

Who is in your social grouping nest? Are there people that have a heart of love and compassion for you?

All those thousands of strands of twigs, moss, and leaves all contribute something in their own unique way.

Make a list of people. Try and get to at least a hundred names.

Then give thanks for them. Honour probably the unseen and unknown contribution they make to the nest you have.

Look for the gifts they offer, the strength, love, and compassion.

Then give that back to them and others.

We all need each other, and every little bit of heartfelt love, compassion, and kindness is restorative.

 

Quotes to consider

• A spiritual leader who lacks basic human compassion has almost no power to change other people, because people intuitively know he or she does not represent the Divine or Big Truth. Such leaders have to rely upon role, laws, and enforcement powers to effect any change in others. Such change does not go deep, nor does it last. Richard Rohr
• No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God’s faithful love. Henri Nouwen inner voice of love
• The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• A refuge is anything that protects, nurtures, or uplifts you. Life can be hard, and everyone has difficult, uncomfortable experiences. We all need refuges. What are your own? Rick Hanson
• Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ”What! You too? I thought I was the only one. C.S. Lewis

Questions to answer

1. Who makes up the strands of your nest?
2. You are a strand in someone else’s nest. What kindness can you offer them today?
3. Picture yourself as the Innkeeper receiving the victim of abuse and crime. What goes through your heart? What emotions get stirred? In the offering of being a strand in this man’s nest, what would you like to give him?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

 

Share Tweet Share More 0SHARES CATEGORIESGETTING WELL STAYING WELL, HELPING OTHERSTAGSEMPOWERMENT, HOPE, RECOVERY, RHYTHM_OF_CONNECTION, THE MAN IN THE DITCHEdit"The Healing Nest of Kindness and Compassion"Post navigation Previous PostPREVIOUSThe Gentle Approach to Heart and Mind Change SEARCH AND YOU SHALL FIND Search for:SearchABOUT BARRY UNDERSTANDING MEN: HOW TO LISTEN SO YOU CAN CONNECT JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST AND GET THIS FREE EBOOK GET MY WEEKLY BLOG POST EMAILED TO YOU Subscribe * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name MESSAGE ME Name * First Last Email * Comment or Message * Submit POPULAR READS

• Why Men Don’t Talk. 26 Reasons for Silence
• I’ve had Enough, Take my Life God, I Want to die
• 14 Proven Bible Verses to Help Your Mental Health
• How to Help Others Solve Problems in 8 Steps
• She prayed to God that she wouldn’t wake up in the morning
• The Lord is My Constant Companion.
• Right Person, Right Place, Right Time and That Time is Now
• Why Taking Personal Responsibility is Crucial for your Mental Health
• How does Reading the Bible help my Mental Health?
• 7 Steps to Help Those who Ruminate.

FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA  

Facebook

Like  

Linkedin

Follow  

Medium

Follow  

Periscope

Follow  

Pinterest

Follow  

Twitter

Follow MEET BARRY

Barry is a writer, coach, online pastor, and course creator that has a passion for Mental Health and Spiritual Formation.

Get two free ebooks. One about Depression and one about Spiritual Exercises that will help your Mental Health